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.
Country subfolders showing as sitelinks in Google, country targeting for home page no longer working
-
Hi There,
Just wondering if you can help.
Our site has 3 region versions (General .com, /ie/ for Ireland and /gb/ for UK), each submitted to Google Webmaster Tools as seperate sites with hreflang tags in the head section of all pages. Google was showing the correct results for a few weeks, but I resubmitted the home pages with slight text changes last week and something strange happened, though it may have been coincidental timing.
When we search for the brand name in google.ie or google.co.uk, the .com now shows as the main site, where the sitelinks still show the correct country versions. However, the country subdirectories are now appearing as sitelinks, which is likely causing the problem. I have demoted these on GWT, but unsure as to whether that will work and it seems to take a while for sitelink demotion to work.
Has anyone had anything similar happen? I thought perhaps it was a markup issue breaking the head section so that Google can no longer see the hreflangs pointing to each other as alternates. I checked the source code in w3 validator and it doesn't show any errors. Anyway, any help would be much appreciated - and thanks to anyone who gets back, it's a tricky type of issue to troubleshoot.
Thanks, Ro
-
With HREFLANG tags, you are sending weird signals. I would recommend ensuring that /ie/ is claimed in Google WMT and targeted to Ireland. The content in the subfolder needs to be specific to your Ireland market, meaning it needs to have different content. It doesn't have to be completely different, but different. Otherwise, it looks like duplicate content and the SEs are going to pick the stronger of the two.
Right now, you are telling them that the only difference in the content is that /ie/ is in Irish English, and /gb/ is in British English. It's not different enough to warrant showing the other content over your main homepage as that is stronger.
Does that all make sense? I would remove the HRELFANGs, ensure the right targeting is in place and that the content is different per country to target those countries.
-
Hi Kate,
Yes, they are geo-targeted versions of the site, but the idea would be to create multilingual versions of the site for other territories in the future, so the hreflang + country targeting seemed to be the best option to allow for future expansion in the site framework.
The site was working correctly for about a month before Google started showing country subfolders as sitelinks for the main domain. However, the correct locale sub-pages are still being shown for other search terms. Seems to be an issue with the home page or branded search, where the correct country homepage is no longer being shown as the main result, and instead as a sitelink beneath the domain.
Ro
-
These are geo-targeted sections and not translations right?
If so, the HREFLANG tags are not needed. Those are for translations. If you have the subfolders marked in Google WMT as geo-targeted to those countries, you should be okay.
How long have you had this setup?
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
-
Advise on the right way to block country specific users but not block Googlebot - and not be seen to be cloaking. Help please!
Hi, I am working on the SEO of an online gaming platform - a platform that can only be accessed by people in certain countries, where the games and content are legally allowed.
International SEO | | MarkCanning
Example: The games are not allowed in the USA, but they are allowed in Canada. Present Situation:
Presently when a user from the USA visits the site they get directed to a restricted location page with the following message: RESTRICTED LOCATION
Due to licensing restrictions, we can't currently offer our services in your location. We're working hard to expand our reach, so stay tuned for updates! Because USA visitors are blocked Google which primarily (but not always) crawls from the USA is also blocked, so the company webpages are not being crawled and indexed. Objective / What we want to achieve: The website will have multiple region and language locations. Some of these will exist as standalone websites and others will exist as folders on the domain. Examples below:
domain.com/en-ca [English Canada]
domain.com/fr-ca [french Canada]
domain.com/es-mx [spanish mexico]
domain.com/pt-br [portugese brazil]
domain.co.in/hi [hindi India] If a user from USA or another restricted location tries to access our site they should not have access but should get a restricted access message.
However we still want google to be able to access, crawl and index our pages. Can i suggest how do we do this without getting done for cloaking etc? Would this approach be ok? (please see below) We continue to work as the present situation is presently doing, showing visitors from the USA a restricted message.
However rather than redirecting these visitors to a restricted location page, we just black out the page and show them a floating message as if it were a model window.
While Googlebot would be allowed to visit and crawl the website. I have also read that it would be good to put paywall schema on each webpage to let Google know that we are not cloaking and its a restricted paid page. All public pages are accessible but only if the visitor is from a location that is not restricted Any feedback and direction that can be given would be greatly appreciated as i am new to this angle of SEO. Sincere thanks,0 -
Help! Choosing a domain for a European sub-brand when working as a partner in North America
Background: Let's say there's a European company ABC.com, they have some presence in the US already for a lot of product brands in a certain space (let's say they make widgets). ABC Co gets 1,600 searches a month and all of that volume centers around the widgets they are known for. ABC Co purchases a company that makes gears, let's call it Gears Inc (gears.com). Gears Inc. was known for making gears in Europe, but their brand is not known in the US (search volume 0). Ideally, I would keep the Gears Inc. brand and build up the presence in the US, separating it from ABC Co. ABC Co wants to maintain their brand and eliminate Gears Inc. But we've received permission to keep the Gears brand for bringing that product to the US ... we will have an uphill battle building up the brand recognition, but at least it won't get lost in what ABC Co is already known for in the US. (ie: we don't want calls for widgets). Domain Situation: ABC Co. has redirected gears.com (DA 1) to a subdomain: {gearmakers}.abcco.com (DA 66) ... they have agreed to place a landing page under that 301 that links to the regional domains (theirs in the EU and ours in the US/North America). They are unwilling to let us use or purchase gears.com OR 301 gears.com directly to our domain. What we're trying to do: build Gears Inc. as a recognizable brand when someone searches "gears inc", this domain would rank first create a simple "brand domain" that a less-tech-savvy users could easily navigate to needs to have recognition in US, Canada and Mexico
International SEO | | mkretsinger
I don't know if this helps or provides anything more? The question is what do we use as our domain name? Any feedback is appreciated!0 -
Using a top level domain name and directing it to a subfolder
Hi, we have a large international network. Our main website sits on .com domain and is used by the UK market. We have an international site in a subdirectory .com/dk/ for Denmark for example. We have also purchased the domain name www.ourcompany.dk/. Should we be forwarding the domain name (www.ourcompany.dk/) to point to the subdirectory www.ourcomany.com.dk/ so in the browser it shows up as www.ourcompany.dk or should we be displaying it as www.ourcompany.com/dk/? Are there any pros and cons to this method? Which one is best and are there any benefits in SEO. Ideally we want the .com domain name to have the best domain authority so would this impact it in any way? Any tips would be great.
International SEO | | Easigrass0 -
Hreflang tag on every page?
Hello Moz Community, I'm working with a client who has translated their top 50 landing pages into Spanish. It's a large website and we don't have the resources to properly translate all pages at once, so we started with the top 50. We've already translated the content, title tags, URLs, etc. and the content will live in it's own /es-us/ directory. The client's website is set up in a way that all content follows a URL structure such as: https://www.example.com/en-us/. For Page A, it will live in English at: https://www.example.com/en-us/page-a For Page A, it will live in Spanish at https://www.example.com/es-us/page-a ("page-a" may vary since that part of the URL is translated) From my research in the Moz forums and Webmaster Support Console, I've written the following hreflang tags: /> For Page B, it will follow the same structure as Page A, and I wrote the corresponding hreflang tags the same way. My question is, do both of these tags need to be on both the Spanish and English version of the page? Or, would I put the "en-us" hreflang tag on the Spanish page and the "es-us" hreflang tag on the English page? I'm thinking that both hreflang tags should be on both the Spanish and English pages, but would love some clarification/confirmation from someone that has implemented this successfully before.
International SEO | | DigitalThirdCoast0 -
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 | | Ben.JD0 -
Showing different content according to different geo-locations on same URL
We would like our website to show different content according to different Geo-locations (but in the same language). For example, if www.mywebsite.com is accessed from the US, it would show text (in English) appealing to North Americans, but, if accessed from Japan, it would show text (also in English) that appeals more to Japanese people. In the Middle East, we would like the website to show different images than those shown in the US and Asia. Our main concern is that we would like to keep the same URL. How will Google index these pages? Will it index the www.mywebsite.com (Japan version) in its Asia archives and the www.mywebsite.com (US version) in its North American archives? Will Google penalise us for showing different content across Geo-locations on the same URL? What if a URL is meant to show content only in Japan? Are there any other issues that we should be looking out for? Kindest Regards L.B.
International SEO | | seoec0 -
Subdomains or subfolders for language specific sites?
We're launching an .org.hk site with English and Traditional Chinese variants. As the local population speaks both languages we would prefer not to have separate domains and are deciding between subdomains and subfolders. We're aware of the reasons behind generally preferring folders, but many people, including moz.com, suggest preferring subfolders to subdomains with the notable exception of language-specific sites. Does this mean subdomains should be preferred for language specific sites, or just that they are okay? I can't find any rationale to this other than administrative simplification (e.g. easier to set up different analytics / hosting), which in our case is not an issue. Can anyone point me in the right direction?
International SEO | | SOS_Children0 -
Poor Google.co.uk ranking for a UK based .net, but great Google.com
I run an extremely popular news & community website at http://www.onedirection.net, but we're having a few ranking issues in Google.co.uk. The site gets most of its traffic from the USA which isnt a bad thing - but for our key term "one direction", we currently don't rank at all on Google.co.uk. The site is located on a server based in Manchester, UK, and we used to rank very well earlier this year - fluttering about in position 5-7 most of the time. However earlier this year, around July, we started to fall down to page 2 or 3, and at the start of this month we don't rank at all for "one direction" on Google.co.uk. On Google.com however we're very strong, always on page one. We're definitely indexed on .co.uk, just not for main search term - which I find a bit frustrating. All the content on our site is unique, and we write 2-4 stories every day. We have an active forum too, so a lot of our content is user-generated. We've never had any "unnatural link building" messages in Webmaster Tools, and our link profile looks fine to me. Do we just need more .co.uk links, or are we being penalised for something? (I can't imagine what though). It certainly seems that way though. Another site, "www.onedirection.co.uk" which is never updated and has a blatant ad for something completely unrelated on its homepage, ranks above us at the moment- which I find quite frankly appalling as our site is pretty much regarded as the worlds most popular One Direction news and fan site. We've spent the last few months improving the page-load times of our site, and we've reduced any unneccesary internal linking on the site. Approx 2 months ago we launched a new forum on the site, 301'ing all the old forum links to the new one, so that could have had an impact on rankings - but we'd expect to see an impact on Google.com as well if this was an issue. We definitely feel that we should be ranking higher on Google.co.uk. Does anyone have any ideas what the iproblems could be? Cheers, Chris.
International SEO | | PixelKicks0
