Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
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 -
How to Get Rid of Dates Shown In Google Search Results
When I enter "Site: URL" to check what a search how Google displays search result, a date appears at the very front. This takes away several characters, really valuable real estate. How can I stop Google from displaying these dates? There are certain Wordpress plugins like "WP Date Remover" however the seem to only apply to blog posts. Dates are appearing on results on all my Wordpress pages. Is there an internal setting in Wordpress that will allow me to remove dates for these non blogpost pages?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Kingalan11 -
My site shows 503 error to Google bot, but can see the site fine. Not indexing in Google. Help
Hi, This site is not indexed on Google at all. http://www.thethreehorseshoespub.co.uk Looking into it, it seems to be giving a 503 error to the google bot. I can see the site I have checked source code Checked robots Did have a sitemap param. but removed it for testing GWMT is showing 'unreachable' if I submit a site map or fetch Any ideas on how to remove this error? Many thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SolveWebMedia0 -
Does blocking foreign country IP traffic to site, hurt my SEO / US Google rankings?
I have a website is is only of interest to US visitors. 99% (at least) of Adsense income is from the US. But I'm getting constant attempts by hackers to login to my admin account. I have countermeasures fo combat that and am initiating others. But here's my question: I am considering not allowing any non US, or at least any non-North American, traffic to the site via a Wordpress plugin that does this. I know it will not affect my business negatively, directly. However, are there any ramifications of the Google bots of these blocked countries not being able to access my site? Does it affect the rankings of my site in the US Google searches. At the very least I could block China, Russia and some eastern European countries.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bizzer0 -
Why do SERP Results ( Rankings ) differ from country to country ?
Hi, I have been doing seo for this client based in Sri lanka for almost 8 months now. Since we started SEO we had set up geographic target setting to UK through google webmaster tools. At the moment Site is completely ranking higher on google uk & other countries except Sri Lanka . On Google.lk site doesn't even come within 1st 5 pages for keywords which are ranked on1st page in other countries ? What do you think about this ? How does it happen ?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | pyxle0 -
Is it possible to Spoof Analytics to give false Unique Visitor Data for Site A to Site B
Hi, We are working as a middle man between our client (website A) and another website (website B) where, website B is going to host a section around websites A products etc. The deal is that Website A (our client) will pay Website B based on the number of unique visitors they send them. As the middle man we are in charge of monitoring the number of Unique visitors sent though and are going to do this by monitoring Website A's analytics account and checking the number of Unique visitors sent. The deal is worth quite a lot of money, and as the middle man we are responsible for making sure that no funny business goes on (IE false visitors etc). So to make sure we have things covered - What I would like to know is 1/. Is it actually possible to fool analytics into reporting falsely high unique visitors from Webpage A to Site B (And if so how could they do it). 2/. What could we do to spot any potential abuse (IE is there an easy way to spot that these are spoofed visitors). Many thanks in advance
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | James770 -
I have a .com site but I am only ranking good on google for Canada and not the USA.
We are located in Canada but sell our products world wide. We are ranking ok on google.ca but are not in the top 50 on google.com. Is it due to my ip address? Is there any tips that you can give me to help up my rating for google.com. Any info you can provide me with will be amazing. Thanks,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | drewzal0 -
Some viagra spammer somehow fooled Google into thinking the title and description metatags of a site pointing to me are about viagra. How did they do that? How do I fix this?
In performing a link: to my site, I found this: Video Of People Using Viagra - Online Drug Store, Guaranteed Shipping <cite>www.planetherbs.com/affiliate-program.html</cite> - Cached -Block all www.planetherbs.com results1 day ago – Video Of People Using Viagra. Online Drug Store, Guaranteed Shipping. Check Order Status. Natural and healthy products! If you go to that url, you will see it's just an affiliate program page. Some viagra spammer somehow changed the title and description metatags that google sees (not actually) and links from what appears to be spammy pages are pointing to me. I don't want to get dinged for this. How do I fix these for myself and planetherbs.com? And how did the spammer do this???
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | KatMouse0