No Return Tags in the international targeting sectio

Selected answers from the Dumb SEO Questions Facebook & G+ community.

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  Greg Kristan: I currently have a few errors in Google Search Console about No Return Tags in the international targeting section. Upon review, I noticed that some of the international sites have a canonical tag ;on them, but others do not. Does not having a canonical tag cause this problem for Google bot even if I have the link rel="alternate" tag that points to the correct page?
  
  The U.S page does not have a canonical tag does on it, but the German ;site does.
  
  Thanks!
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  Suraj Gadage: +Greg Kristan ;the href lang tag needs to be added on both the sites (US and German) to avoid the errors reported in GWT.
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  Jamie Fish: +Suraj Gadage is correct 
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  Greg Kristan: +Suraj Gadage ;+Jamie Fish ;it looks like they do, but the other countries all have canonical tags except the U.S site. I am wondering if that is causing the problem?
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  Jamie Fish: +Greg Kristan if the german has a canonical tag to the .com, Google to recognize that the .com is the "main" website. That could be causing the issues here. You should remove the canonical tag from German website and replace with lang tags. this way Google will recognize the language difference and show your German site to German users. 
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  Greg Kristan: +Jamie Fish ;what if the german site uses a canonical tag for their .de site? It looks like all of the international sites use a correct canonical tag for their respective site. The US site does not have a canonical tag though. That is something I am wondering would cause an issue with Google.
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  Greg Kristan: +Jamie Fish ;+Suraj Gadage ;also I appreciate you guys jumping on this question to help me!!
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  Jamie Fish: Canonical tags should be in place on both sites, but don't point the .com canonical at the .de. or vice versa. I believe there is a scheme tag you can use, sameas, to tell Google that both websites are the same, but different 
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  Jim Munro: From the expert panel in this week's SEO Questions hangout on air on 00:23:01 into the YouTube video: https://dumbseoquestions.com/q/no_return_tags_in_the_international_targeting_section +Greg Kristan
  
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