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
-
Trying to get Google to stop indexing an old site!
Howdy, I have a small dilemma. We built a new site for a client, but the old site is still ranking/indexed and we can't seem to get rid of it. We setup a 301 from the old site to the new one, as we have done many times before, but even though the old site is no longer live and the hosting package has been cancelled, the old site is still indexed. (The new site is at a completely different host.) We never had access to the old site, so we weren't able to request URL removal through GSC. Any guidance on how to get rid of the old site would be very appreciated. BTW, it's been about 60 days since we took these steps. Thanks, Kirk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kbates0 -
Is it possible to rank in google mexico when you don't have a local site?
Hello, someone is asking me why we don't rank in google mexico search engine. I mentioned we don't have a google mexico site, but have a USA site, so we may rank, but not as well as if we had the mexico site. IS there anyway to improve rankings or tips? THanks! Laura Robinson
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lauramrobinson321 -
Are prices shown in search results good for e-commerce sites?
Hello here. I own an e-commerce website (virtualsheetmusic.com) and with the fact we have implemented structured data for our product pages, now our search results on Google appear with pricing information whereas most of our competitors don't have that information displayed (yet). I am wondering: Do you think is that good? What side effects could that cause? Less CTR? Less bounce rate? Less traffic? Any thoughts on this issue are very welcome. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau0 -
Should I let Google crawl my production server if the site is still under development?
I am building out a brand new site. It's built on Wordpress so I've been tinkering with the themes and plug-ins on the production server. To my surprise, less than a week after installing Wordpress, I have pages in the index. I've seen advice in this forum about blocking search bots from dev servers to prevent duplicate content, but this is my production server so it seems like a bad idea. Any advice on the best way to proceed? Block or no block? Or something else? (I know how to block, so I'm not looking for instructions). We're around 3 months from officially launching (possibly less). We'll start to have real content on the site some time in June, even though we aren't planning to launch. We should have a development environment ready in the next couple of weeks. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DoItHappy0 -
Google penalized site--307/302 redirect to new site-- Via intermediate link—New Site Ranking Gone..?
Hi, I have a site that google had placed a manual link penalty on, let’s call this our
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Robdob2013
company site. We tried and tried to get the penalty removed, and finally gave up and purchased another name. It was our understanding that we could safely use either a 302 or 307 temporary redirect in order to redirect people from our old domain to our new one.. We put this into place several months and everything seemed to be going along well. Several days ago I noticed that our root domain name had dropped for our selected keyword from position 9 to position 65. Upon looking into our GWT under “Links to Your site” , I have found many, many, many links which were pointed to our old google penalized domain name to our new root domain name each of this links had a sub heading “Via this intermediate link -> Our Old Domain Google Penalized Domain Name” In light of all of this going on, I have removed the 307/302 redirect, have brought the
old penalized site back which now consists of a basic “we’ve moved page” which is linked to our new site using a rel=’nofollow’ I am hoping that -1- Our new domain has probably not received a manual penalty and is most likely now
received some sort of algorithmic penalty, and that as these “intermediate links” will soon disappear because I’m no longer doing the 302/307 from the old sight to the new. Do you think this is the case now or that I now have a new manual penalty place on the new
domain name.. I would very much appreciate any comments and/or suggestions as to what I should or can do to get this fixed. I need to still keep the old domain name as this address has already been printed on business cards many, many years ago.. Also on a side note some of the sub pages of the new root domain are still ranking very
well, it’s only the root domain that is now racking awfully.. Thanks,0 -
Multiple Google+ Local (Google Place) under one email address
As a automotive dealership group, we have 15+ business listings set up under one Google+ local account. Google+ Local (Google Places) offers the ability to upload a data file for 10+ listings, so we've kept all listings under one login for efficiency. Is there any specific local SEO benefit or any general benefit at all to having each business listing set up under their own separate email address?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | autoczar0 -
Is My site seeing a Google Dance ? - Rankings all over the place
My eCommerce website is seeing some rankings flucuate daily from say rank 20 to rank 130 whilst some other keywords ago up and down by as much as 40 places. I have been putting up alot of new unique content and can see in GWT that google has been crawling my site more but given that I was affected by the google panda updates which saw a 40% drop in traffic I'm only just to recover some of it., i have also been trying to get rid of any poor links and our linking building is only concentrating on high quality posts and links. I am wondering if this is the post panda update - "google dance" or is google having issues trying to work where to rank my site and possibly punish me? thanks Sarah.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SarahCollins0 -
Why my site is "STILL" violating the Google quality guidelines?
Hello, I had a site with two topics: Fashion & Technology. Due to the Panda Update I decided to change some things and one of those things was the separation of these two topics. So, on June 21, I redirected (301) all the Fashion pages to a new domain. The new domain performed well the first three days, but the rankings dropped later. Now, even the site doesn't rank for its own name. So, I thought the website was penalized for any reason, and I sent a reconsideration to Google. In fact, five days later, Google confirmed that my site is "still violating the quality guidelines". I don't understand. My original site was never penalized and the content is the same. And now when it is installed on the new domain becomes penalized just a few days later? Is this penalization only a sandbox for the new domain? Or just until the old URLs disappear from the index (due to the 301 redirect)? Maybe Google thinks my new site is duplicating my old site? Or just is a temporal prevention with new domains after a redirection in order to avoid spammers? Maybe this is not a real penalization and I only need a little patience? Or do you think my site is really violating the quality guidelines? (The domain is http://www.newclothing.co/) The original domain where the fashion section was installed before is http://www.myddnetwork.com/ (As you can see it is now a tech blog without fashion sections) The 301 redirect are working well. One example of redirected URLs: http://www.myddnetwork.com/clothing-shoes-accessories/ (this is the homepage, but each page was redirected to its corresponding URL in the new domain). I appreciate any advice. Basically my fashion pages have dropped totally. Both, the new and old URLs are not ranking. 😞
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | omarinho0