Indexation for Canadian adult sites: bilingual pages, gated areas and what to fix first

1Symptom, cause, fix

2The bilingual trap

A frequent Canadian problem is French pages that search engines treat as copies of English ones. Google's multilingual guidance is for each language version to have its own URL, to reference itself as canonical, and to be linked to its counterparts with hreflang. A French page whose title, menu and footer are still in English looks like a duplicate, however good the body text is. Translate the whole page before expecting it to be indexed. For the URL layout, see site architecture.

3When the age check hides too much

An age check placed in front of the whole site hides the open pages too. In URL Inspection, the rendered page will show the verification screen instead of your content. Move the check so it guards only the gated section, and confirm that crawlers and unverified visitors see the same open pages. The settings involved are listed on technical SEO.

4Province pages that never stick

Search engines often crawl but decline to index pages that differ only by the place name. Unless a province or city page has something real, such as premises, delivery times or tax details, fold it into a single page. Our note on city versus national SEO helps decide which pages earn their place.

5A short monthly check

1. Compare indexed English and French pages: if every open page is translated, the counts should be close.
2. Inspect three open pages and one gated page with URL Inspection.
3. Check the sitemap lists only open pages, in both languages.
4. Look for new "crawled, not indexed" pages and note what they have in common.

6Reading the report by language

Search Console's Page indexing report shows totals for the whole site, which hides problems on a bilingual one. Add the English and French sections as separate properties or filter by folder, and look at each language's indexed count, its excluded pages and the reasons given. A healthy bilingual site shows similar patterns in both; a large gap in one language points to missing hreflang, thin translations or pages the age check is wrapping by mistake.

7Prices, currency and duplicate products

Canadian stores that also sell to the US sometimes publish the same product twice, once in Canadian dollars and once in US dollars, on different URLs with the same text. Search engines often index only one, not always the one you want. Either keep one product page with a currency switch that does not change the URL, or make the country versions genuinely separate with hreflang for en-CA and en-US, and check which one Google treats as canonical.

8Sitemaps that match intent

List only the pages you want found in your XML sitemaps, in both languages, and keep out anything behind the age check, every filter combination and the site's own search pages. Separate sitemaps for English and French make it easy to see in Search Console how many submitted pages are indexed in each. Update them automatically when products are added or removed, so the sitemap never advertises pages that no longer exist.

9After a move or redesign

Record indexed totals by language and page type before launch. After launch, compare weekly: a sudden fall in French pages often means hreflang or the language switch broke, while a fall in product pages usually means redirects or canonical tags went wrong. Catching either in the first week saves months of recovery. Structure is covered in our guide to site architecture.

10What healthy looks like

On a well-run bilingual adult site, each language's indexed total roughly matches the open pages written in it, new products appear in search within days, gated and filter pages stay out without fuss, and the excluded list is made up of pages you chose to exclude. Getting there usually takes one careful clean-up and then a short monthly check.

11Seasonal products that come and go

Canadian adult stores add gift sets before Valentine's Day and the holidays, then remove them weeks later. If those pages simply disappear, Search Console fills with not-found errors and any links they earned are lost. Keep a permanent gift category, in both languages, whose contents change through the year, and when a seasonal product ends, redirect it to that category or its closest replacement. Next year the category is already indexed and ranking when the season starts.

12When Google picks the wrong language

Sometimes Google shows the English page to a French searcher, or treats the French page as the canonical one for both. The usual causes are hreflang tags that point one way only, canonical tags that point every French page to its English twin, or French pages that are mostly English text. Check a few pairs with URL Inspection, note the language Google detected, read which canonical Google selected, and fix the tags so each page names itself as canonical and the pair point to each other.

13A quarterly look at the numbers

14Who should own the check

Indexing problems are usually caused by small changes made by people who never look at Search Console: a developer updating a template, a marketer adding a tracking tag, a translator renaming a folder. Give one person the monthly check, and ask everyone who changes the site to tell them. A two-line note in a shared document, recording what changed and when, makes the cause of a sudden drop easy to find. The technical service behind this is on technical SEO.

15Starting from scratch

On a new bilingual site, submit separate sitemaps for each language on launch day, link the French section from the English home page, and request indexing for a handful of key pages. Then check weekly for the first two months, when most problems appear.

16Sources

• Google's search documentation

The full rules and reports live on these sites; the guide gives the practical summary.

QQuestions