Google.co.uk & Google.com difference of ranking
-
How can our website rank on page 3 in google.co.uk and yet it ranks on page 20 for the same keyword on google.com?
This doesn't seem to affect our competitors though and its only our site that is being affected/penalized.
-
For technical signals they'd have to remove any UK signals by replacing with US or neutral. Like hosting location (US) or Webmaster Tools' geographic target setting (Unlisted).
For content signals, agree: keep what already exists with possibly some revisions and/or build additional content that refers to the global nature of the business and the markets being served. Maybe home page copy that talks about "serving clients world-wide". Pages like "Top 5 Reasons Californians Visit Blackpool", and all that kind of thing indicating the page is relevant to Californians.
-
Instead of removing UK ranking signals, would it not be better to add some US ranking signals in addition - in an effort to rank for both .co.uk and .com?
-
I see this happening in Canada. Even though in reality your business, like many in Canada, is serving a global market, Google suddenly decides your website is primarily relevant for one of the non-US English speaking markets, and so knocks it back on .com while leaving it alone on .ca (or .uk or ..au.).
My strategy would be to remove as many signals as possible that would make them think you're only serving the UK.
There can be a problem with this approach: hopefully not in your case but there may be a period where the non-.com ranking suffers as a result. I had a situation where I had a clear choice between ranking page 1 on .ca .uk .au while page 10 on .com - or on page 2 for all. Webmaster tools market setting could be flipped back and forth at will to cause either state. The only way out was to set it at page 2 for everywhere and do everything else to get back on 1 - took time and we had to accept the page 2 .ca etc ranking meanwhile.
-
We used to get good traffic from both google.co.uk and google.com as some mobile devices are set to use google.com by default and its still showing the correct listings for all other sites which rank in the uk search in google.com so its more curiosity as to why we were being penalized.
The other point is our not wanting to miss out on foreign visitors who are looking for hotels in Blackpool as it is a tourist hotspot so to speak.
We're clearing cache and checking in incognito browsers to check rankings and to add to the mystery some visitors (depending on isp's) see the sites on page 1.
Thanks for the offer of checking rankings, we have this covered.
-
Out of interest why do you want to rank on google.com if you are targeting "blackpool hotels" are you getting a lot of US clients?
I would of thought it would be mainly UK searchers you're looking to target?
Also have you tried using SEO Moz's ranking checker to confirm a US search position? (It could be google personalising your search).
If you PM me your domain and keyword ill check for you.
-
Pre-penguin we had 2 sites which dominated the Google search for "blackpool hotels" and hundreds of variations. The sites are beginning to perform again for the longer keywords and most are returning to page 1. The money term, so to speak, is "blackpool hotels" as it gets over 27,000 searches in google per month.
One of our main competitors had/has a much worse linking profile than us and they jumped back into page 1. They hold less content for their clients than we do too. With the content of our competitors and ourselves being related to the UK no overseas office are in play.
Geographically our servers are located in the US, simply down to budget at this time. The links we have were never paid for and we've never really launched any campaigns down to our content being so good.
Neither site has any duplication of its content on other domain names (this was removed in May) and all duplicate content was redirected to the main or given canonical meta info.
Rankings were always top 5 in both google.com and google.co.uk pre-penguin.
All the rankings in Bing and Yahoo have been unaffected with the post-penguin changes we've made which does point out the links we had were poor to begin with.
Does this all sound like its to do with old links from duplicate sites still playing a part?
-
There's lots of factors at play here - for example, what are you competitors backlink profiles like? Are they getting links from the US / World wide? How does this compare to your backlink profile.
What about citations, (reputable) directory listings? How about on-page references to over-seas offices etc. Do you have projects/services targeted at these markets? Where are their sites hosted?
How are they ranking for other keywords, particularly geographically relevant terms? Can you identify what your competitors are doing that you aren't?
You mention that you had to remove content to get back the .co.uk rankings. I take it your trying to recover from penguin?
Have the ranking on google.com always been this way though (even before you were penalised?)
It's hard to be more specific without details of the site/keyword(s) in question.
-
Its a good point you make, but all the sites ranking in the top 4 pages remain the same in google.com search for the same keyphrase that rank in google.co.uk - all apart from our site(s) which seem to be penalized.
Would this be down to a difference in algorithms on differing google servers? Could some be seeing content we've removed to get back the .co.uk rankings?
-
Generally speaking it's a lot harder to rank on google.com than it is for a geo location like google.co.uk - perhaps you are sending stronger signals to google that you are a uk based company?
FYI if you are only trying to rank in the UK then anyone going to google.com gets redirected to .co.uk any way.
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
-
How to track google auto search suggestion click?
Hello Guys, In google.co.uk when I search SEL and google gives me option of different different sites and when I click on any one site then that click tracking I need. I have attached the screenshot to understand easily. Is it possible to track such things or possible via server logs etc? TV99h
Reporting & Analytics | | micey1231 -
Some goal conversion in Google analytics showing under referral
Yesterday I have created Google analytics account for a new website but few goal conversions comes from payment gateway site (paypal.com, epdq.co.uk) and showing under referral. How to fix this issue so I can know the real source of Goal conversion. *Note - utm_nooverride=1 on thank you page applied, payment gateway URL is already placed in Referral Exclusion List. So please don't suggest either of them. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Alick3000 -
Apple.com showing in Google Analytics "My Top Active Pages" - Why?
Hi Mozzers This has more than likely been asked before but my searches have left me empty handed so I have asked on here ( sorry! ) Please see attached screenshot, do you have any idea why apple.com is showing in my top pages? I'm just curious more than anything as this isn't the first time I've noticed it. Anybody know? Happy Friday people, cheers Jamie CiTCA5b.png
Reporting & Analytics | | SanjidaKazi1 -
Rankings just took a wallop in the last hour.
Has anyone else checked their rankings today and noticed a big shift? We just got smacked by G big time.
Reporting & Analytics | | Progauto0 -
Goal Totals in Google Analytics
How do I get a cumulative tally of all the goals reached in google analytics? I've been using the percentages currently, but I was wondering if there was an easier way. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | OOMDODigital0 -
Google as referring domain
Hi all, a colleague asked a question, which I could not answer (never even noticed this "problem") 😞 When we are logged into our GA account and go the referring domains section, we find Google. I always thought that these visitors came via Google Image Search, but not all of them do. Most of them come via "/imgres", but some come via "/" (always thought that "/" was the homepage?), "/url" and "//" Maybe I am just stupid, but honestly I could not explain what these strings mean... or how these visitors landed on our site... Can you help me???
Reporting & Analytics | | accessKellyOCG0 -
Google not reading my canonical links
Hi All, New to SEOmoz but so far love it. My reports list tons of duplicate links and webmaster tools does as well. In fact it just updated last night and added several hundred more. I have the canonical tag on my products. Here is a product example page: http://www.stonehousecollection.com/card/funny-christmas-cards/KX296a.html Thank you for the help. Matt
Reporting & Analytics | | mker0 -
Re-branding with Google Analytics
GM Mozzers, I apologize in advance if my description of this issue is confusing, but I'm doing my best here. Anyway, due to legal reasons, one of the publications I manage was forced to change their name. We set-up a 301 redirect from the previous domain and have also set-up an analytics profile for the new domain, however, as it stands, visits to the old domain outnumber those to the new domain 12:1. Is there anyway to set-up my analytics profile to the new URL so that this traffic is being attributed to the new domain and the new site, since, after all, it is a redirect. I hope that I explained this sufficiently. Any and all insight will be very much appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Reporting & Analytics | | NiallSmith0