Stop serving your home page twice
Multilingual sites often keep each language under a prefix (/en/, /th/) and still serve the home page at /. When / shows the same English page as /en/ and both call themselves canonical, search engines see two copies of one page. This check reads the page head: an unprefixed page whose hreflang links list a prefixed version in its own language, and whose canonical does not point at that version, is reported. No extra request is made.
Find out whether your site has this problem, and every other check, in one free scan.
Check your site freeWhy it matters
When / and /en/ serve the same page and each calls itself canonical, search engines see two copies and split the ranking between them.
How to fix
- 1 Prefer a redirect from / to the visitor's language version, falling back to your main language.
- 2 If / must keep serving the page, set its canonical link to the /en/ version.
- 3 Keep / as the x-default in your hreflang links if it is the page for unmatched visitors.
Common mistakes
- Letting / render the default language directly instead of redirecting to /en/.
- Giving / a canonical that points at itself.
- Fixing / but leaving other unprefixed paths (/about) serving copies of /en/about.
How to verify
- 1 Open / and check it redirects to a language version, or that its canonical names that version.
- 2 View the source of /en/ and confirm its canonical names /en/, not /.
Related checks
Ready to see where you stand?
Scan your site and get your Engineering Score with a prioritized roadmap in under a minute, no signup required.