Hreflang implementation vs. Canonicalization – Strange results - Google Search and SEO forum at WebmasterWorld

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Hreflang implementation vs. Canonicalization – Strange results

Yuki121

7:55 am on Mar 25, 2026 (gmt 0)

Hey everyone,

I’m currently auditing a multi-language project targeting the LATAM and EU markets. I’ve been looking at how competitors handle their localized subdirectories to avoid duplicate content flags after the March 2026 core update.

I was checking out the structure of <another site> as a reference—they seem to have a very aggressive yet clean hreflang setup across their Portuguese and Spanish versions. However, GSC is still flagging some of my similar pages as "Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user."

For those of you in the software/digital license space, are you finding that Google is becoming more restrictive with cross-border SEO? Is it better to go with CC-TLDs or just stick to a robust subdirectory structure like the one I mentioned?

[edited by: not2easy at 11:07 am (utc) on Mar 25, 2026]
[edit reason] Please see TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

not2easy

11:32 am on Mar 25, 2026 (gmt 0)

Hello Yuki121 and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

It would help the discussion if you could explain the changes you made so others can offer their ideas.

Even without knowing the specific changes, I can offer that Google can take some time to digest structural changes and their URL inspection tools in GSC can offer insight.

Kendo

12:54 am on Mar 26, 2026 (gmt 0)

"Duplicate, Google chose different canonical than user." is unavoidable when visiting with both http and https links, even when redirecting for https.

Where do the http links come from when your site is definitely https? Mostly from old indexing. Also, they may not be intelligent enough to accept example.com/index.php and example.com/ as the same page.

In sitemaps and WMT make sure all sites/pages are listed using their https link.