Wrong country sites being shown in google
-
Hi,
I am having some issues with country targeting of our sites.
Just to give a brief background of our setup and web domains
We use magento and have 7 connected ecommerce sites on that magento installation
1.www.tidy-books.co.uk (UK) - main site
2. www.tidy-books.com (US) - variations in copy but basically a duplicate of UK
3.www.tidy-books.it (Italy) - fully translated by a native speaker - its' own country based social medias and content regularly updated/created
4.www.tidy-books.fr (France) - fully translated by a native speaker - its' own country based social medias and content regularly updated/created
5.www.tidy-books.de (Germany) - fully translated by a native speaker - uits' own country based social medias and content regularly updated/created
6.www.tidy-books.com.au (Australia) - duplicate of UK
7.www.tidy-books.eu (rest of Europe) - duplicate of UK
I’ve added the country and language href tags to all sites.
We use cross domain canonical URLS
I’ve targeted in the international targeting in Google webmaster the correct country where appropriate
So we are getting number issues which are driving me crazy trying to work out why
The major one is for example
If you search with an Italian IP in google.it for our brand name Tidy Books the .com site is shown first then .co.uk and then all other sites followed on page 3 the correct site www.tidy-books.it
The Italian site is most extreme example but the French and German site still appear below the .com site.
This surely shouldn’t be the case?
Again this problem happens with the co.uk and .com sites with when searching google.co.uk for our keywords the .com often comes up before the .co.uk so it seems we have are sites competing against each other which again can’t be right or good.
The next problem lies in the errors we are getting on google webmaster on all sites is having no return tags in the international targeting section.
Any advice or help would be very much appreciated. I’ve added some screen shots to help illustrate and happy to provide extra details.
Thanks
UK%20hreflang%20errors.png de%20search.png fr%20search.png it%20search.png
-
We are having the same issues. We have already implemented hreflang. Is there anything else that might help solve this problem?
-
Hi Geraldine,
So, meanwhile just jumped in what would be most cost efficient implementation for the HREFLANG on your website.
Give the following article to your developer: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en
Basically he will create a sitemap for each of the websites, which will indicate what is the alternate version of every single page in other languages.
You will then submit this sitemap to EACH of the Google Webmaster Tools accounts for the websites (.fr, .de, .com, etc.)
This should be the fastest and most cost efficient in your case.
Reminder: Remove the Hreflang link from current versions. It is the best to indicate alternate via only once channel.
Gr., Keszi
-
Could you write me Private Message with your email address? I need to ask a few questions to your developer in order to search for a good implementation.
-
Hi Keszi,
Thank you for the response. I've added the general Hreflang tags So just the top level part of the domain. ie
and so forth
We use Magento, it's likely I will have to get our developers to do it so I'm seeking some advice to hopefully minimise cost or do it ourselves.
Thanks again
-
Hi Geraldine,
I checked it quickly but I do not see the implementation done.
Regarding of how you could do it fast, what Content Management System are you using?
Gr., Keszi
-
Hi so we need to have the hreflang tags setup so they show the url of that page?
like this?
http://www.tidy-books.eu**/bookcases-storage**" />http://www.tidy-books.co.uk//bookcases-storage" />
http://www.tidy-books.com/bookcases-storage" />
http://www.tidy-books.com.au**/bookcases-storage**" />
http://www.tidy-books.it//mobili-librerie-contenitori-libri" />http://www.tidy-books.fr/bibliotheques" />
http://www.tidy-books.de/http://www.tidy-books.de/kinderbuecher-regal-buecheraufbewahrung-33" />Any ideas of how to do this with oout spending hours manually adding the different urls etc?Cheers -
Thanks for the answers I'm going to look into this further with you suggestions
-
Hi!
Like Jamie has mentioned it, you have a HREFLANG issue on the site.
Try implementing for each of the domains the following code:
<- default for international
<- default for US
<- default for Aus
<- default for italian language!
<- default for french language
<- default for german language!I would implement it like this.
The difference is compared to Jamie's implementation idea, is that I wouldn't put the .com version as the x-default.
All of the hreflang markups have to appear on each of the pages! For example:
Read through the articles Jamie provided, they will be a huge help to kick-start the implementation.
Gr., Keszi
-
It appears that you do not have “link rel="alternate” for all locations, I'm not sure if that’s going to fix it completely but Google will not understand if you do not associate each alternate version.
It's a good idea to provide a generic URL for geographically unspecified users if you have several alternate URLs targeted at users with the different languages, but in different locales.
E.G each separate domain with a different language should be mentioned.
Also double check language code as incorrect language codes can cause issues. Also make sure you canonical them and add a language specific sitemap. You also want to add a default for example.com is default add the following.
So in the code it would look like this
http://www.internationalseomap.com/hreflang-tags-generator/
http://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
Hope that makes sense.
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 Indexing my 301 Redirects to Other sites
Long story but now i have a few links from my site 301 redirecting to youtube videos or eCommerce stores. They carry a considerable amount of traffic that i benefit from so i can't take them down, and that traffic is people from other websites, so basically i have backlinks from places that i don't own, to my redirect urls (Ex. http://example.com/redirect) My problem is that google is indexing them and doesn't let them go, i have tried blocking that url from robots.txt but google is still indexing it uncrawled, i have also tried allowing google to crawl it and adding noindex from robots.txt, i have tried removing it from GWT but it pops back again after a few days. Any ideas? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | cuarto7150 -
Does google ignore ? in url?
Hi Guys, Have a site which ends ?v=6cc98ba2045f for all its URLs. Example: https://domain.com/products/cashmere/robes/?v=6cc98ba2045f Just wondering does Google ignore what is after the ?. Also any ideas what that is? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CarolynSC0 -
301 redirecting a site that currently links to the target site
I have a personal blog that has a good amount of back links pointing at it from high quality relevant authoritative sites in my niche. I also run a company in the same niche. I link to a page on the company site from the personal blog article that has bunch of relevant links pointing at it (as it's highly relevant to the content on the personal blog). Overview: Relevant personal blog post has a bunch of relevant external links pointing at it (completely organic). Relevant personal blog post then links (externally) to relevant company site page and is helping that page rank. Question: If I do the work to 301 the personal blog to the company site, and then link internally from the blog page to the other relevant company page, will this kill that back link or will the internal link help as much as the current external link does currently? **For clarity: ** External sites => External blog => External link to company page VS External sites => External blog 301 => Blog page (now on company blog) => Internal link to target page I would love to hear from anyone that has performed this in the past 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Keyword_NotProvided0 -
Mobile First Index: What Could Happen To Sites w Large Desktop but Small Mobile Sites?
I have a question about how Mobile First could affect websites with separate (and smaller) mobile vs desktop sites. Referencing this SE Roundtable article (seorountable dot com /google-mobile-first-index-22953.html), "If you have less content on your mobile version than on your desktop version - Google will probably see the less content mobile version. Google said they are indexing the mobile version first." But Google/ Gary Illyes are also on the record stating the switch to mobile-first should be minimally disruptive. Does "Mobile First" mean that they'll consider desktop URLs "second", or will they actually just completely discount the desktop site in lieu of the mobile one? In other words: will content on your desktop site that does not appear in mobile count in desktop searches? I can't find clear answer anywhere (see also: /jlh-marketing dot com/mobile-first-unanswered-questions/). Obviously the writing is on the wall (and has been for years) that responsive is the way to go moving forward - but just looking for any other viewpoints/feedback here since it can be really expensive for some people to upgrade. I'm basically torn between "okay we gotta upgrade to responsive now" and "well, this may not be as critical as it seems". Sigh... Thanks in advance for any feedback and thoughts. LOL - I selected "there may not be a right answer to this question" when submitting this to the Moz community. 🙂
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | mirabile0 -
How do I know what pages of my site is not inedexed by google ?
Hi I my Google webmaster tools under Crawl->sitemaps it shows 1117 pages submitted but 619 has been indexed. Is there any way I can fined which pages are not indexed and why? it has been like this for a while. I also have a manual action (partial) message. "Unnatural links to your site--impacts links" and under affects says "Some incoming links" is that the reason Google does not index some of my pages? Thank you Sina
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SinaKashani0 -
1 Ecommerce site for several product segments or 1 Ecommerce site for each product segment ?
I am currently struggling with the decision whether to create individual ecommerce sites for each of 3 consumer product segments or rather to integrate them all under one umbrella domain. Obviously integration under 1 domain makes link building easier, but I am not sure how far google will favor in rankings websites focussed on one topic=product segment. Product segments are medium competitive.Product segments are not directly related but there may be some overlap in customer demographics- Any thoughts ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse1 -
Is this ok for content on our site?
We run a printing company and as an example the grey box (at the bottom of the page) is what we have on each page http://www.discountbannerprinting.co.uk/banners/vinyl-pvc-banners.html We used to use this but tried to get most of the content on the page, but we now want to add a bit more in-depth information to each page. The question i have is - would a 1200 word document be ok in there and not look bad to Google.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
SERP Experience After You Resubmit Your Site to Google
Hello Everyone, We suddenly noticed that our keywords fell off the map and discovered that porn had been placed (via.htaccess redirects and masking) on our site. The porn links caused Google to drop us.We scrubbed our .htaccess file and asked Google to reindex our site 3 weeks ago.Does anyone have experience with reindexing?If so, how long were you down and did your keyword positions return eventually?Thanks,Bob
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | impressem0