Removing United Kingdom next to a generic TLD
-
We have a generic top level domain (gTLD) called www.xyz.com which was set to target United Kingdom in Google Webmaster Tools. We have now launched a US version of the site targeting US consumers – www.xyz.com/us and set the geographic target to United States on GWT.
When I search for xyz on www.google.com, the serps brings up the .com site with “United Kingdom” beside it. This will most likely confuse our prospects as they would think we only have a UK operation. How can I tell Google not to include “United Kindgom” next to www.xyz.com
Any thoughts?
Since this was happening, I removed the geographic location target for www.xyz.com to null on GWT. Would that help solve the issue?
Look forward to your reply. Many Thanks
Jay
-
Hi Jay,
if it is possible, it would be of great help if you could tell us the domain name of the site, because without giving a look to its code is quite hard to find an answer.
The same is valid for you, Yellabird. In your case, then, I would really suggest you to open a new question thread in the Q&A, in order to not mix both cases, even though they apparently are very similar.
Thanks
-
I have a client with the exact same problem. They are using a .com and only do business in the US. They've never done business internationally, yet "United Kingdom" shows up next to their domain in SERPS just like this:
Title Tags | More Title Tags
www.companyx.com - <cite>United Kingdom</cite>
Meta Description..................................................................
What is causing this?
-
Hi John,
Many Thanks for the comments. Really appreciate it. The content on both the sites is unique so we don't need to really worry about duplicate issues. But the links you pointed out are of great help.
So when I search for xyz on www.google.com, the results page shows the www.xyz.com and next to that it mentions United Kingdom. I wanted to know how we can get rid of the United Kingdom.
Thanks for your help
Jay
-
Removing the geotargeting for www.xyz.com sounds like a good first step. I'd watch like a hawk though to see if you see any loss of impressions or rank on google.co.uk searches. When you say that "United Kingdom" appears next to it in the SERPs, where does that display?
How much duplicate content is there between the UK and US versions of your site? If you have duplicate content, Google recently announced support for rel=alternate tags: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html. This can be used to help have only one version of each page appear in a SERP. What you'd do it select a canonical version of the page across duplicate (or near duplicate) versions, and then set the alternate pages. Google will show the canonical versions title and description in the SERPs, but will show the country specific display URL based on the users geolocation. I'm still working on getting these up and running on my site.
Also, for Bing and other search engines, you might want to take a look at http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2011/03/01/how-to-tell-bing-your-website-s-country-and-language.aspx. This gives instructions for how to tell bots which language and country each page is specific to.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Google is still indexing with https,i removed ssl for my website
My website is claydip.com. I removed ssl for my website, but when i type claydip in google search it is still displaying with https and saying no description available..i lost visitors from search..kindly help me. I moved from bluehost to deamhost. I had a ssl at bluehost, when i move to dreamhost i am not using it.
International SEO | | knextweb8190 -
If domain mapping subfolders to TLD's is it perceived as a fully separate entity/site therafter ?
Hi I take it once you have domain mapped a country specific subfolder to a country specific TLD (for better local region targeting reasons) Google perceives it as a completely separate entity and it no longer shares any of the parent sites domain benefits (such as domain authority etc) so from that point on requires its own dedicated link building etc ? All Best Dan
International SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
International TLD Differentiation Concerns
Currently working on a project where the TLD of the parent company site is a .COM and the U.S. subsidiary is a .US. This is a first for me. What I do know. Both sites must be live Parent (.COM) targets essentially the entire international market US Subsidiary (.US) targets United States only Concerns are even with non-duplicate content will there be confusion there with the closely related domain, just a TLD change? Any suggestions are greatly, greatly appreciated!
International SEO | | dodgejd0 -
Is there a correlation between ranking and different TLD
I've been thinking about buying some domains recently with some different extensions. In particular domains with country specific TLD's such as .in and .be etc.. But my question is has anyone had experience ranking domains like these in the UK market. Is there a correlation between ranking and a country specific domain to rank in the UK market? I know I can target these domains at the UK market in GWMT, but is there a negative factor in trying to rank say a .in the UK?
International SEO | | MalcolmGibb0 -
Anyone have experience using .asia TLD?
We are the top US supplier of a very high end French made product. The largest market for their products is Japan. We would like to target Japanese buyers that travel (for business or pleasure) to the West Coast (we're in SF) for personalized US delivery. I have been reading all related SEOmoz posts for International SEO. But looking to the future there could be other Asian opportunities, so a .asia domain has appeal (as does the $6 per year cost vs. $99 for a .jp). Is this TLD credible (both to potential customers and Yahoo Japan)? THX
International SEO | | Chasmo1 -
.US VS .COM TLD Domains
Hi there! I have a spanish client who wants to enhance its online presence on the US. US is their most potential country. Its ok to create a .US website (and geolocalizate in GWT to the USA) and a .COM domain for the rest of ther word (without orientation) with the same content? Thank you so much. Jabi
International SEO | | overalia0 -
Migration from tld's to .com sub folders
Hi Guys, We currently operate five websites, 1 on .co.uk, 1 on .co.nz, 1 on .de and 1 on .com (geo targeted to USA) and 1 on .com/au (targeted at Australia). Open Site Explorer currently credits our .co.uk with 212 unique domains linking to us, our .com has 130, our .co.nz has 110 and our .de (which is new) has around 10. We have a website on .com/au targeting Australia and we have gained around 30 - 40 links into this sub folder. Our rankings in google australia for this website are fantastic and it would appear to me that we have inherited all the domain authority of our .com. The UK is currently our most important market and we operate a website on a .co.uk there. Our main competitors there have around 300 - 400 unique domains linking to them. What I am thinking of doing is deploying our UK content onto our .com root domain (which is currently geo targeted at the US which is a really small market for us) and redirecting all of the .co.uk pages at the root folder of the .com and changing the geo targeting of the .com to the UK. Additionally I was going to migrate our .co.nz and our .de websites into .com/nz/ and .com/de/ sub folders. I will also create a new .com/us/ folder for the US. I can only go off the fact that the only sub folder website we have (.com/au) has been very successful for us. Do you think migration of all of these websites onto the .com domain using sub folders will provide a meaningful boost to our rankings by virtue of having more back links into one domain? Are there any big risks in doing so and how long would you expect the redirects and changes to be picked up by google. I really appreciate any help and comments on this. Kind Regards
International SEO | | ConradC
Conrad Cranfield0 -
What’s the best way to convert ccTLD to global TLD?
We started out as a Canadian site targeting Canadian users. Now our site http://iCraft.ca has a lot of international buyers and sellers and .ca TLD doesn’t make sense anymore, as we are not performing well on Google.com We are doing a complete site redesign right now, which will address a lot of coding and content specific issues, but we suspect .ca domain will always hold us back in achieving good positions on Google.com. Since Google doesn’t allow ccTLDs to set geo-targeting, what are our options? a) Migrating to a brand new .com site and setting up 301 redirects for all links from iCraft.ca. Would we lose all rankings in this example and pretty much start building them from scratch? Or would PR be transferred page by page from one domain to another through 301 redirects? b) Setup a separate .com site with mirrored content to target global audience and keep .ca site to target Canada. Not sure if splitting PR for the same pages between 2 sites is a good idea. Also, how would you address duplicate content properly in our situation?
International SEO | | MarinaUX
In this video that I found here on forum http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo Matt Cutts says that it’s ok to have duplicate content on different ccTLDs, but he says - make sure you localize your content on those domains. What if you can’t? Most of the content on our site is meant for anyone, not just Canadian users. So, for the most part, we’d have exactly same content on .com site, as we have on .ca site. We could display prices in different currencies on product pages, but the rest of the content – blogs, forum etc. are not country-specific and can’t be localized easily. Also, it’s not clear from the video if all mirrored sites should sit on the same domain name for each country, like example.com and example.ca or is it ok to have example.com and icraft.ca? c) Is there a better option? Thanks for your help!0