GWT - International Targeting
-
By selecting a country in the Country Targeting section of GWT what effect does this have?
For example if I select UK will this boost rankings on google.co.uk and decrease them on google.com etc?
If we are based in the UK but our customer base is worldwide should we not select anything?
-
By providing Google Webmasters Tools with your international targeting information, you are helping Google decide if your website should appear and how it should appear (in local results) in a location. It only affects results for geographically related queries in which a user limits the scope of a search to a certain country. It will not affect appearance in search results that are not geographically bounded. Hope that helps.
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
-
Regional sites built on different platforms - will this solution for international targeting work?
We are working with our dev team on a few upcoming user stories to improve store.hp.com. We came across a question which isn’t clear in the international targeting documentation. Within http://store.hp.com, we have a number of regional stores, but those are often built on separate platforms. Therefore a story developed on the US infrastructure doesn’t carry over to Canada and so forth. The Canada Store is managed by a different team, so that story needs to get scoped, prioritized, etc. independently. In regards to helping Google understand page equivalence, will Google accept the page relationship if we include hreflang tags exclusively in the sitemap for the US site and exclusively as page-level markup for Canada site? For example: http://store.hp.com/CanadaStore (hreflang notation at page-level): http://store.hp.com/us/en" /> http://store.hp.com/CanadaStore" /> http://store.hp.com/us/en" /> http://store.hp.com/us/en (hreflang notation within sitemap file): <loc>http://store.hp.com/us/en</loc> rel="alternate" hreflang="en-ca" href=" http://store.hp.com/CanadaStore" /> rel="alternate" hreflang="en-us" href="http://store.hp.com/us/en" /> Appreciate the help anyone can give! Zach
Technical SEO | | ZachKline0 -
Can google bots read my internal post links if they are all listed in a javascript accordian where I list my sources?
I post a JavaScript accordion drop down tab [ a collapsible content area ] at the end of all my posts. I labeled the accordion "Show Article Sources"., and when a user clicks it, then the accordion expands open and it shows all the sources I listed for my article. And this is where I post all of my articles links that I reference per each article. But I read somewhere that google crawlers can not read text in a drop down JavaScript tab. So I am wondering now if this is true because that would mean I have no internal linking SEO going on since it cant read the links? ..... if it is true, then I should remove the accordion from all my articles and some how include the links I reference in the actual body text so I can get SEO benefits from external linking similar content? If that's true, what is an aesthetic way to do this, any example links? Tips ? Thoughts ?
Technical SEO | | ianizaguirre0 -
"Equity sculpting" with internal nofollow links
I’ve been trying a couple of new site auditor services this week and they have both flagged the fact that I have some nofollow links to internal pages. I see this subject has popped up from time to time in this community. I also found a 2013 Matt Cutts video on the subject: https://searchenginewatch.com/sew/news/2298312/matt-cutts-you-dont-have-to-nofollow-internal-links At a couple of SEO conferences I’ve attended this year, I was advised that nofollow on internal links can be useful so as not to squander link juice on secondary (but necessary) pages. I suspect many websites have a lot of internal links in their footers and are sharing the love with pages which don’t really need to be boosted. These pages can still be indexed but not given a helping hand to rank by strong pages. This “equity sculpting” (I made that up) seems to make sense to me, but am I missing something? Examples of these secondary pages include login pages, site maps (human readable), policies – arguably even the general contact page. Thoughts? Regards,
Technical SEO | | Warren_Vick
Warren1 -
Abnormally high internal link reported in Google Search Console not matching Moz reports
If I'm looking at our internal link count and structure on Google Search Console, some pages are listed as having over a thousand internal links within our site. I've read that having too many internal links on a page devalues that page's PageRank, because the value is divided amongst the pages it links out to. Likewise, I've heard having too many internal links is just bad in general for SEO. Is that true? The problem I'm facing is determining how Google is "discovering" these internal links. If I'm just looking at one single page reported with, say, 1,350 links and I'm just looking at the code, it may only have 80 or 90 actual links. Moz will confirm this, as well. So why would Google Search Console report different? Should I be concerned about this?
Technical SEO | | Closetstogo0 -
What is the best way to correct GWT telling me I have mobile usability errors in Image directories
In GWT, I wish to remove / resolve the following errors Mobile Usability > Viewport not configured Mobile Usability > Small font size Mobile Usability > Touch elements too close The domain www.sandpiperbeacon.com is responsive, and passes the mobile usability test. A new issue I noticed, is that GWT is reporting 200+ errors just for image index pages such as http://www.sandpiperbeacon.com/images/special-events/ for example. Website users cannot access these pages (without editing the URL manually) so I don't consider these usability issues. BUT, I hate to see 200+ errors, especially when Google itself says "Websites with mobile usability issues will be demoted in mobile search results." I could set the image directories to dissalow in Robots.txt, but I do not want the images to stop appearing in image search, so this seems like a flawed solution. I cannot be the only person experiencing this, but I have been unable to find any suggestions online.
Technical SEO | | RobertoGusto0 -
My website internal pages are not getting cached with latest data
In our website we have sector list, in home page main category list is displayed click on main category user has to select sub category and reach the result page. EX: Agriculture->Agribusiness->Rice Agriculture page is indexed,but Agribusiness and Rice page is not getting cached,it is showing old indexed date as 23 July 2013,but i have submitted the sitemaps after this 4 times, and some url i have submitted manually in web master tool, but after this also my pages are not cached recently, Please suggest the solution and what might be the problem Thank you In Advance, Anne
Technical SEO | | Vidyavati0 -
When I look in OpenSiteExplorer, it says that it hasn't followed any of my internal links... WTF?
When I look at my site in open site explorer, it says it has followed 1 internal link.. I know that opensiteexplorer has updated, because my domain rank has changed since the last time i looked. I figured it just hadn't fully crawled and indexed my links, but considering I have had an account here for over a month, and the site is over 7 months old, I doubt that is the case. My site is www.ontracparts.com can anybody help me here?? Thanks, Tyler
Technical SEO | | TylerAbernethy0 -
Best Way to Handle - International Content - Different Language
Our site currently is focused in the USA and the entire site is in the English language. We have considered broadening our scope to include content from foreign countries - i.e. Brazil. What is the best way to approach this -- can we use our existing domain and just have a specific section of the site that is dedicated to a particular Country with content translated into that Country's predominant language? OR could this create SEO issues -- having a domain with both English and some other language? Would it be better to have this on a totally different domain with Country extension? This is totally foreign territory for me - bad pun intended. Any advice, help would be appreciated. Thanks. Matt
Technical SEO | | MWM37720