Official statement
When regional language versions have identical or very similar content, Google indexes a single URL as canonical but continues to treat hreflang annotations. The URL displayed is switched based on the user's location, even though Search Console only reports on the canonical version.
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Official statement from
(5 years ago)
⚠ A more recent statement exists on this topic
Can Google arbitrarily choose which language version to index when the content i...
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TL;DR
Google indexes a single canonical URL for identical multilingual content but honors hreflang. The version displayed depends on the user's location, even though Search Console only shows the canonical one.
❓ Frequently Asked Questions
Comment hreflang fonctionne-t-il avec canonical?
Les annotations hreflang guident Google vers la version géolocalisée, en dépit du choix d'une URL canonique unique pour l'indexation.
Que se passe-t-il si mes contenus multilingues sont trop semblables?
Google choisira une seule URL canonique mais utilisera hreflang pour l'affichage selon la localisation.
Dois-je changer mes pratiques SEO en fonction de cette déclaration?
Adoptez une vérification stricte des balises hreflang tout en surveillant les performances des versions locales.
🎥 From the same video 14
Other SEO insights extracted from this same Google Search Central video · published on 22/05/2021
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