US + CA Store. Separate Domain v Sub-Domain vs Sub-Folders vs Singular Domain

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Topic summary

A Shopify Plus merchant is consolidating two separate stores (US .com and Canada .ca) into a single store and seeking guidance on domain structure for SEO and platform management.

Three options under consideration:

  • Single .com domain with automatic currency switching
  • Two separate domains (.com and .ca) pointing to same store
  • Single .com with subfolders (/en-us/ and /en-ca/)

Key technical concerns identified:

Google requires unique URLs for each currency and doesn’t support IP-based content adaptation. Currency switchers relying on IP detection cause issues since Google crawls primarily from US-based IPs, creating mismatches with product feeds.

Expert recommendation:

Both separate domains (Option 2) and subfolders (Option 3) are SEO-viable. Since separate domains already exist, switching to subfolders would require URL changes and temporary SEO impact during reindexing.

While Google doesn’t penalize duplicate content, identical English content across domains/subfolders may compete for rankings or be ignored. Proper implementation requires hreflang tags to signal related URLs to Google.

Current status:

A follow-up question emerged about implementing a subfolder structure (us-en, ca-en, ca-fr) with Canada as primary store, with technical issues preventing subfolder setup for the Canadian market.

Summarized with AI on October 26. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Hey everyone,

I’m on Shopify Plus and currently have two separate stores (under one account)

.com store = USA

.ca store = Canada

Same website, same products, same inventory. Currently two separate Shopify stores, with separate customers, orders etc.

For the Canada store, I have setup markets that allow for currencies to change based on US or CA.

We want to make it all one website/store as it doesn’t make sense for them to be separate.

However, I’m trying to decide how I should setup the domains, both in terms of SEO and management of Google Merchant and Facebook Catalogs etc.

Option 1 = use .com for both markets and just have the currency change automatically using the markets feature

Option 2 = use www.xxxxx.com for US market and www.xxxxx..ca for CA market. Two separate domains going to the same website could be bad for SEO?

Option 3 = use .com as main domain, but create sub-folders for /en-us/ and /en-ca.

What are the benefits of having the exact same content show up on separate domains or sub-folders? I cant think of any? ANd would assume everything being under a singular domain just makes everything easier?

Thanks in advance for your help

Joe

1 Like
2

Hey @mrjoemorgan

Option 1 won’t likely be sufficient as Google needs unique URLs for each currency. Though you can use a currency switcher, these are typically based on IP address and Google will only ever come from a US-based IP. Thus if you are sending CA pricing in your product feed, they will not match.

Google doesn’t want you to use IP location to automatically adapt your content.
"Do not use IP analysis to adapt your content. IP location analysis is difficult and generally not reliable. Furthermore, Google may not be able to crawl variations of your site properly. Most, but not all, Google crawls originate from the US, and we do not attempt to vary the location to detect site variations.

Use one of the explicit methods shown here (hreflang, alternate URLs, and explicit links)."

This article explains the issue of automatically adapting content based on IP and its negative impact on multi-currency stores.

Both Options 2 and 3 are perfectly fine for SEO. I’d almost encourage you to go with Option 2 since you already have two different domains. Changing them to use the subfolders will impact your SEO in the short term because you are changing the URLs so Google will have to reindex each page.

3

Thank you, Ilana - super helpful information.

If we did two separate domains, would Google not penalize us for having the exact same content (aside from currency) on two totally separate domains? Understand we would love the domain authority in the short-term with “shutting down” one the domains, but just wondering about longer-term impacts?

4

@mrjoemorgan It’s hard to give general advice so take it with a grain of salt.

Google doesn’t “penalize” for duplicate content but you would essentially be fighting for ranking between the two or one may be ignored in favor of the other. So it can be harder in the long term if the content is the same and both are in English.

I typically prefer subfolders for this reason, but Google may still see subfolders with the same language but different regions as the same content.

When you set up the store on Markets, you’ll designate the region (locale) and language and Shopify will automatically create the correct tags for both subdomains and subfolders. They should look something like the following assuming US is your primary:

Where the rel=“alternate” code tells Google these two URLs are related.

If you keep your accounts separate, you’ll need to add that in yourself.

A bit technical so sorry if this is over your head, but reading Google’s docs may help: https://developers.google.com/search/docs/specialty/international/localized-versions

5

@ilanadavis Based on your feedback, I’m trying to setup the subfolder setup for our store. With the following structure:

The primary store is setup as Canada. Any feedback on this structure vs using sub-domains?

Also when I’m trying to setup sub-folders, the option isn’t showing up for Canada, but showing up for US. Is there a reason for this behaviour