undefined
Skip to content
Moz logo Menu open Menu close
  • Products
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Pro Home
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Home
    • STAT
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Home
    • Compare SEO Products
    • Moz Data
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis
    • Keyword Explorer
    • Link Explorer
    • Competitive Research
    • MozBar
    • More Free SEO Tools
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO
    • SEO Learning Center
    • Moz Academy
    • MozCon
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • The Moz Story
    • New Releases
  • Log in
  • Log out
  • Products
    • Moz Pro

      Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

    • Moz Local

      Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

    • STAT

      SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

    • Moz API

      Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

    • Compare SEO Products

      See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

    • Moz Data

      Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

    Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
    Moz Pro

    Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

    Try it free!
  • Free SEO Tools
    • Domain Analysis

      Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

    • Keyword Explorer

      Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

    • Link Explorer

      Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

    • Competitive Research

      Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

    • MozBar

      See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

    • More Free SEO Tools

      Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • Learn SEO
    • Beginner's Guide to SEO

      The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

    • SEO Learning Center

      Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

    • On-Demand Webinars

      Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

    • How-To Guides

      Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

    • Moz Academy

      Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

    • MozCon

      Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
    Moz API

    Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

    Find your plan
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Digital Marketers

      Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

    • Small Business Solutions

      Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

    • Agency Solutions

      Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

    • Enterprise Solutions

      Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

    • The Moz Story

      Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

    • New Releases

      Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

    Surface actionable competitive intel
    New Feature

    Surface actionable competitive intel

    Learn More
  • Log in
    • Moz Pro
    • Moz Local
    • Moz Local Dashboard
    • Moz API
    • Moz API Dashboard
    • Moz Academy
  • Avatar
    • Moz Home
    • Notifications
    • Account & Billing
    • Manage Users
    • Community Profile
    • My Q&A
    • My Videos
    • Log Out

The Moz Q&A Forum

  • Forum
  • Questions
  • Users
  • Ask the Community

Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

  1. Home
  2. SEO Tactics
  3. International SEO
  4. Google does not index UK version of our site, and serves US version instead. Do I need to remove hreflanguage for US?

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.

Google does not index UK version of our site, and serves US version instead. Do I need to remove hreflanguage for US?

International SEO
3
15
3.6k
Loading More Posts
  • Oldest to Newest
  • Newest to Oldest
  • Most Votes
Reply
  • Reply as question
Log in to reply
This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
  • lcourse
    lcourse last edited by Oct 25, 2015, 12:58 PM

    Webmaster tools indicates that only 25% of pages on our UK domain with GBP prices is indexed.
    We have another US domain with identical content but USD prices which is indexed fine.

    When I search in google for site:mydomain I see that most of my pages seem to appear, but then in the rich snippets google shows USD prices instead of the GBP prices which we publish on this page (USD price is not published on the page and I tested with an US proxy and US price is nowhere in the source code).

    Then I clicked on the result in google to see cached version of page and google shows me as cached version of the UK product page the US product page.

    I use the following hreflang code: rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US" href="https://www.domain.com/product" />
    rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" href="https://www.domain.co.uk/product" />

    canonical of UK page is correctly referring to UK page.

    Any ideas? Do I need to remove the hreflang for en-US to get the UK domain properly indexed in google?

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • lcourse
      lcourse @Christy-Correll last edited by Nov 21, 2015, 5:55 AM Nov 21, 2015, 5:55 AM

      Hi Christy, not yet.

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • Christy-Correll
        Christy-Correll Staff last edited by Nov 20, 2015, 10:10 PM Nov 20, 2015, 10:10 PM

        Hi there, have you been able to figure out this riddle yet -- or are you still working on it? We'd love an update!

        Christy 🙂

        lcourse 1 Reply Last reply Nov 21, 2015, 5:55 AM Reply Quote 0
        • topic:timeago_earlier,16 days
        • lcourse
          lcourse @VERBInteractive last edited by Nov 5, 2015, 5:12 AM Nov 5, 2015, 5:12 AM

          Thanks. Will post an update once we figured out this riddle.

          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
          • VERBInteractive
            VERBInteractive last edited by Oct 30, 2015, 9:38 AM Oct 30, 2015, 9:38 AM

            Worth a try, specifically since nothing else seems to be working at this point.

            Sorry I couldn't be more help. Please let us know what the solution is when ever you figure it out.

            lcourse 1 Reply Last reply Nov 5, 2015, 5:12 AM Reply Quote 0
            • lcourse
              lcourse @VERBInteractive last edited by Oct 30, 2015, 9:33 AM Oct 30, 2015, 9:33 AM

              No.

              But in theroy it should not make a difference.
              hreflang can be either implemented in sitemap or in page.

              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • VERBInteractive
                VERBInteractive last edited by Oct 30, 2015, 9:24 AM Oct 30, 2015, 9:24 AM

                Do your sitemaps indicate the varying languages. See: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en

                https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en

                lcourse 1 Reply Last reply Oct 30, 2015, 9:33 AM Reply Quote 0
                • lcourse
                  lcourse @VERBInteractive last edited by Oct 29, 2015, 10:23 AM Oct 29, 2015, 10:23 AM

                  Thanks for checking. Yes, rich snippets are frequently not showing currently, however this is a different issue and it may be temporary.

                  My primary concern is rather that google does not index our sitemap for this domain according to search console and related that they show the .com page as cached version of the .uk page.

                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • VERBInteractive
                    VERBInteractive last edited by Oct 29, 2015, 10:09 AM Oct 29, 2015, 10:09 AM

                    Very odd, when we do a search for "Adorini Firenze - Deluxe" in google UK with a VPN on for the UK it doesn't get any of the price schema markup. Maybe google is having a hard time deciding what to do with the schema so for normal results it doesn't pull any of the schema. What KW are ranking for this page? do you get similar results as us?

                    https://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&ie=UTF-8&q=Adorini Firenze - Deluxe&oq=Adorini Firenze - Deluxe&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l3j69i60l2.943j0j7&rct=j

                    lcourse 1 Reply Last reply Oct 29, 2015, 10:23 AM Reply Quote 0
                    • lcourse
                      lcourse @VERBInteractive last edited by Oct 28, 2015, 5:07 PM Oct 28, 2015, 5:07 PM

                      Happens already for many months.

                      Good idea to test with VPN. I just gave it a try with a UK proxy  and same result.

                      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • VERBInteractive
                        VERBInteractive last edited by Oct 28, 2015, 8:57 AM Oct 28, 2015, 8:57 AM

                        odd, looks to pull the cached schema, the issue might correct itself with time.

                        It's a bit of a long shot, but have you tried the lang/country codes completely in lower case? I doubt that will fix it but the tool in this Moz article I found (https://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool) generates them in all lower case.

                        Also out of curiosity are you doing your test searches through a VPN?

                        https://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool

                        lcourse 1 Reply Last reply Oct 28, 2015, 5:07 PM Reply Quote 0
                        • lcourse
                          lcourse @VERBInteractive last edited by Oct 27, 2015, 3:43 PM Oct 27, 2015, 3:43 PM

                          Sure, click on cached version of the first result in the following google search. Also you see here the rich snippets in USD instead of GBP:

                          https://www.google.es/search?q=site%3Ahumidordiscount.co.uk&oq=site%3Ahumidordiscount.co.uk&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.6216j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=site:humidordiscount.co.uk+firenze

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • VERBInteractive
                            VERBInteractive last edited by Oct 27, 2015, 8:38 AM Oct 27, 2015, 8:38 AM

                            Well at least we checked off one thing that it is not. 🙂

                            Can you provide a link to the SERP where you are seeing the issue?

                            lcourse 1 Reply Last reply Oct 27, 2015, 3:43 PM Reply Quote 0
                            • lcourse
                              lcourse last edited by Oct 26, 2015, 9:34 AM Oct 26, 2015, 9:34 AM

                              everything looks fine  in google search console.

                              no hreflang errors, no sitemap errors and google crawls every day basically all our pages for many months already.

                              1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • VERBInteractive
                                VERBInteractive last edited by Oct 26, 2015, 9:02 AM Oct 26, 2015, 9:02 AM

                                Odd, are you seeing any errors in Google Search Console (use to be Google webmaster tools) under Search Traffic/International Targeting. It will show any hreflang errors, I would start there and fix any errors.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                • 1 / 1
                                1 out of 15
                                • First post
                                  1/15
                                  Last post

                                Got a burning SEO question?

                                Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                                Start my free trial


                                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.

                                • See all categories

                                Related Questions

                                • fJ66doneOIdDpj

                                  Multilang site: Auto redirect 301 or 302?

                                  redirect 301 redirect 302 international seo

                                  We need to establish if 301 or 302 response code is to be used for our auto redirects based on Accept-Language header. https://domain.com
                                  30x > https://domain.com/en
                                  30x > https://domain.com/ru
                                  30x > https://domain.com/de The site architecture is set up with proper inline HREFLANG.
                                  We have read different opinions about this, Ahrefs says 302 is the correct one:
                                  https://ahrefs.com/blog/301-vs-302-redirects/
                                  302 redirect:
                                  "You want to redirect users to the right version of the site for them (based on location/language)." You could argue that the root redirect is never permanent as it varies based on user language settings (302)
                                  On the other hand, the lang specific redirects are permanent per language: IF Accept-Language header = en
                                  https://domain.com > 301 > https://domain.com/en
                                  IF Accept-Language header = ru
                                  https://domain.com > 301 > https://domain.com/ru So each of these is 'permanent'. So which is the correct?

                                  International SEO | Oct 11, 2022, 2:10 AM | fJ66doneOIdDpj
                                  0
                                • lcourse

                                  How to interlink 16 different language versions of site?

                                  I remember that Matt Cutts recommended against interlinking many language versions of a site.
                                  Considering that google now also crawls javascript links, what is best way to implement interlinking? I still see otherwhise extremely well optimized large sites interlinking to more than 10 different language versions e.g. zalando.de, but also booking.com (even though here on same domain). Currently we have an expandable css dropdown in the footer interlinking 16 different language versions with different TLD. Would you be concerned? What would you suggest how to interlink domains (for user link would be useful)?

                                  International SEO | Jul 28, 2015, 11:52 AM | lcourse
                                  0
                                • Alex.Weintraub

                                  Auto-Redirecting Homepage on Multilingual Site

                                  The website has an auto-redirecting homepage on a multilingual site. Here is some background: User visits the site for first time > sent to javascript age verification page with country of origin selector. If selects "France" then served French page (.com/fr-fr/). If selects any other country, then served English page (.com/en-int/). A cookie is set, and next time the user visits the site, they are automatically served the appropriate language URL. 1st Question: .com/ essentially does not exist. It is being redirected to .com/en-int/ as this is the default page. Should this be a 301 redirect since I want this to serve as the new homepage? 2nd Question:. In the multilingual sitemap, should I still set .com/ as the hreflang="x-default" even though the user is automatically redirected to a language directory? According to Google, as just released here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/05/creating-right-homepage-for-your.html "automatically serve the appropriate HTML content to your users depending on their location and language settings. You will either do that by using server-side 302 redirects or by dynamically serving the right HTML content. Remember to use x-default rel-alternate-hreflang annotation on the homepage / generic page even if the latter is a redirect page that is not accessible directly for users." So, this is where I am not clear.  If use a 302 redirect of .com/ to either .com/en-int/ or .com/fr-fr/, won't I then lose the inbound link value and DA/PA of .com/ if I just use a 302? Note: there is no .com/ at this moment. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks,Alex

                                  International SEO | May 22, 2014, 4:28 PM | Alex.Weintraub
                                  0
                                • Ben.JD

                                  If I redirect based on IP will Google still crawl my international sites if I implement Hreflang

                                  We are setting up several international sites. Ideally, we wouldn't set up any redirects, but if we have to (for merchandising reasons etc) I'd like to assess what the next best option would be. A secondary option could be that we implement the redirects based on IP. However, Google then wouldn't be able to access the content for all the international sites (we're setting up 6 in total) and would only index the .com site. I'm wondering whether the Hreflang annotations would still allow Google to find the International sites? If not, that's a lot of content we are not fully benefiting from. Another option could be that we treat the Googlebot user agent differently, but this would probably be considered as cloaking by the G-Man. If there are any other options, please let me know.

                                  International SEO | Jan 2, 2014, 4:22 PM | Ben.JD
                                  0
                                • Lina-iWeb

                                  Massive jump in pages indexed (and I do mean massive)

                                  Hello mozzers, I have been working in SEO for a number of years but never seen anything like a jump in pages indexed of this proportion (image is from the Index Status report in Google Webmaster Tools: http://i.imgur.com/79mW6Jl.png Has anyone has ever seen anything like this?
                                  Anyone have an idea about what happened?
                                  One thing that sprung to mind might be that the same pages are now getting indexed in several more google country sites (e.g. google.ca, google.co.uk, google.es, google.com.mx) but I don't know if the Index Status report in WMT works like that. A few notes to explain the context: It's an eCommerce website with service pages and around 9 different pages listing products. The site is small - only around 100 pages across three languages 1.5 months ago we migrated from three language subdomains to a single sub-domain with language directories. Before and after the migration I used hreflang tags across the board. We saw about 50% uplift in traffic from unbranded organic terms after the migration (although on day one it was more like +300%), especially from more language diversity. I had an issue where the 'sort' links on the product tables were giving rise to thousands of pages of duplicate content, although I had used the URL parameter handling to communicate to Google that these were not significantly different and only to index the representative URL. About 2 weeks ago I blocked them using the robots.txt (Disallow: *?sort). I never felt these were doing us too much harm in reality although many of them are indexed and can be found with a site:xxx.com search. At the same time as adding *?sort to the robots.txt, I made an hreflang sitemap for each language, and linked to them from an index sitemap and added these to WMT. I added some country specific alternate URLs as well as language just to see if I started getting more traffic from those countries (e.g. xxx.com/es/ for Spanish, xxx.com/es/ for Spain, xxx.xom/es/ for Mexico etc). I dodn't seem to get any benefit from this. Webmaster tools profile is for a URL that is the root domain xxx.com. We have a lot of other subdomains, including a blog that is far bigger than our main site. But looking at the Search Queries report, all the pages listed are on the core website so I don't think it is the blog pages etc. I have seen a couple of good days in terms of unbranded organic search referrals - no spike or drop off but a couple of good days in keeping with recent improvements in these kinds of referrals. We have some software mirror sub domains that are duplicated across two website: xxx.mirror.xxx.com and xxx.mirror.xxx.ca. Many of these don't even have sections and Google seemed to be handling the duplication, always preferring to show the .com URL despite no cross-site canonicals in place. Very interesting, I'm sure you will agree! THANKS FOR READING! 79mW6Jl.png

                                  International SEO | Jul 5, 2013, 3:51 PM | Lina-iWeb
                                  0
                                • Indiatravelz

                                  Geographic Target set up in Google webmaster tool

                                  Hi, When i launched my web site 3 months ago ( I'm am very new to SEO)  I have set up the geographical target section in Google webmaster tool  for US. Now, I'm thinking to change it to some other geo target to see if i can get more traffic. However, recently few of my prompted keywords got really well in Google US ranking. Here are my Questions: if i will change the geo settings in webmaster tool will effect the ranking i already managed to achieve in US? In the list of all the countries in Google webmaster tools what does is mean "unlisted"? Can i select more than one country to target and if I can how? Thanks!! Raviv

                                  International SEO | Apr 5, 2013, 5:32 AM | Indiatravelz
                                  0
                                • Corel

                                  Non US site pages indexed in US Google search

                                  Hi, We are having a global site wide issue with non US site pages being indexed by Google and served up in US search results.  Conversley, we have US en pages showing in the Japan Google search results. We currently us IP detect to direct users to the correct regional site but it isn't effective if the users are entering through an incorrect regional page.  At the top of each or our pages we have a drop down menu to allow users to manually select their preferred region.  Is it possible that Google Bot is crawling these links and indexing these other regional pages as US and not detecting it due to our URL structure? Below are examples of two of our URLs for reference - one from Canada, the other from the US /ca/en/prod4130078/2500058/catalog50008/ /us/en/prod4130078/2500058/catalog20038/ If that is, in fact, what is happening, would setting the links within the drop down to 'no follow' address the problem? Thank you. Angie

                                  International SEO | May 25, 2012, 4:11 AM | Corel
                                  0
                                • MarkChambers

                                  Domain strategy for UK and USA

                                  Hi Everyone, We have example.org.uk with 20K inbound links. We want to target the US as well as the UK. I would be interested to hear what approaches are best for SEO. For example is it better to keep our current domain and have subdirectories for USA for example. Or would it be better to register example.org and then use subdirectories. Or is it better to use different domains for each country? Any help with this much appreciated. Cheers

                                  International SEO | Jul 18, 2011, 7:48 PM | MarkChambers
                                  0

                                Get started with Moz Pro!

                                Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                                Start my free trial
                                Products
                                • Moz Pro
                                • Moz Local
                                • Moz API
                                • Moz Data
                                • STAT
                                • Product Updates
                                Moz Solutions
                                • SMB Solutions
                                • Agency Solutions
                                • Enterprise Solutions
                                • Digital Marketers
                                Free SEO Tools
                                • Domain Authority Checker
                                • Link Explorer
                                • Keyword Explorer
                                • Competitive Research
                                • Brand Authority Checker
                                • Local Citation Checker
                                • MozBar Extension
                                • MozCast
                                Resources
                                • Blog
                                • SEO Learning Center
                                • Help Hub
                                • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                                • How-to Guides
                                • Moz Academy
                                • API Docs
                                About Moz
                                • About
                                • Team
                                • Careers
                                • Contact
                                Why Moz
                                • Case Studies
                                • Testimonials
                                Get Involved
                                • Become an Affiliate
                                • MozCon
                                • Webinars
                                • Practical Marketer Series
                                • MozPod
                                Connect with us

                                Contact the Help team

                                Join our newsletter
                                Moz logo
                                © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                                • Accessibility
                                • Terms of Use
                                • Privacy

                                Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.