I have a multi-language website like this:
example.com/de/about
example.com/fr/about
example.com/about (English)
On this website there are about 3000 users. Many of them have a profile picture, a name but not much written on their profile page. This means
example.com/de/sarah
example.com/fr/sarah
example.com/sarah (English)
have the same content and only differ in the translated header/footer/bread-crumbs.
I have a similar issue with my blog posts. They are only in English, and the language versions only differ in the translated header/footer/bread-crumbs.
My first thought was to put on all the language versions hreflang
annotations and a canonical tag leading to the English version. However, I found an article from Search VIU which says that I should not do this:
If you are using a canonical tag solution on your website, make sure that URLs that have a canonical tag pointing to another URL do not receive hreflang annotations. hreflang annotations are okay for URLs that point to themselves via canonical tag and for URLs that do not have canonical tags.
I found another extreme case here: Canonical tag for untranslated content on a multilingual site where the language sites did not differ at all (not even in the navigation). The solution here was to use 'noindex' for the other language versions. Is this the best solution here as well? It has the downside that people from Germany & France will find a URL to a profile or blog with an English navigation only.
hreflang
annotations..." - You seem to be implying that you don't already have "hreflang
annotations"? "the language sites did not differ at all (not even in the navigation)" - Regarding the linked question, where does it state the navigation does not differ? They have different URLs, so presumably the navigation must differ?hreflang
attributes. The website was created years ago and now its the first time I start doing SEO. I know that this is bad. To the referece, you may be right - I thought that is what he meant with "untranslated pages" but he didn't specify.