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.ie returning more and more UK based results, why?
-
I have discovered the most infuriating issue with Google Search for Irish users and it seems to be getting increasingly worse in the last 2 years or so. This is not only frustrating as a business owner (in fact it could bring a business to its knees) but it is rage inducing as a consumer.
Google knows the location where I am searching from and I'm using google.ie yet I still get just a small number of Irish websites usually followed by eBay and Amazon results then a never ending list of websites that are based in the United Kingdom. Now, I know the one thing that we all have in common is the use of the English language, however what we don't have in common is shipping costs. In order to slightly increase the number of Irish based companies I need to add in the phrase 'Ireland' to my search (on google.ie in Ireland) and this makes only a small difference. In fact, oftentimes Google seems to throw in the odd American or Australian site just to really wind me up.
It's completely absurd that Google rarely returns results for .ie websites or irish based websites when searching in Ireland. Many UK companies don't ship to Ireland (including many of the eBay and Amazon results). This is killing Irish businesses who have the products and cheaper or free shipping and many how are working damn hard on their SEO are still being passed up for companies that have nothing to do with our economy.... Why oh why is this happening. -
Thanks Mirko,
Yup, I have this done on my site
It seems to be on a general scale that Google chooses to ignore Irish sites even .ie sites over UK and US results. Very frustrating for Irish businesses and buyers. We've only a population of 4m and it would be nice to have the Irish online economy to work a little better!
-
Hi,
I'm not sure how advanced your SEO knowledge is but geotargeting on the Google Search Console in combination with the hreflang tag could be the solution for your specific site to appear in right search results.
I'd suggest to read through the following links to get an idea of what it is:
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en
Hope this helps for now
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
-
Why Doesn't Google Use My Title Tag and Meta Description?
Hi fellow Moz SEOs, Need your URGENT help! We set an optimised title & meta description for our client websites. These titles are approved by our clients. Before somedays, they checked on Google, noticed the title & meta description were not the same. Next moment, they notified me about this issue. The title & meta description looks fine when I checked the source code. So, why Google use title & meta description differently? For example: Title approved by client: Top Specialist Divorce & Family Lawyer - Yeo & Associates LLC
International SEO | | Verz
Google set our title: Yeo & Associates LLC: Top Specialist Divorce & Family Lawyer Title approved by client: Filing For Divorce Online in Singapore | DivorceBureau®
Google set our title: DivorceBureau®: Filing For Divorce Online in Singapore Title approved by client: Halal Buffet & Bento/Packet Meals Event Caterer Singapore | Foodtalks
Google set our title: Foodtalks - Halal Buffet & Bento/Packet Meals Event Caterer Singapore Title approved by client: Child Care Centre in Singapore| Top Preschool | Carpe Diem
Google set our title: Carpe Diem: Child care Centre in Singapore| Top Preschool Every day, they are requesting me to update Google's title with their approved title. Also, asking me these questions.
Why did this happen?
Why didn't set their recommended title? Is there any way to set our approved titles? Please, help me to find the solution. ASAP Thanks in advance!0 -
International SEO - Targeting US and UK markets
Hi folks, i have a client who is based in italy and they set up a site that sells travel experiences in the sout of Italy (the site currently sit on a server in Italy). The site has been set up as gTLDs: www.example.com They only want to target the US and the UK market to promote their travel experiences and the site has only the english version (the site does not currently offer an italian version). If they decide to go for the gTLDs and not actually change to a ccTLDs (which would be ideal from my point of view) how are the steps to be taken to set this up correctly on GSC? They currently only have one property registered on GSC: www.exapmple.com therefore i guess the next steps are: Add new property - www.example.com/uk and and set up geo targeting for UK Existing property - www.example.com/ set up geo targeting for US In case the client does not have the budget to optimise the content for american and british languages, would still make sense to have 2 separate property in GSC (example.com for US market and example.com/uk for UK market)? Few considerations: Add canonical tag to avoid duplicate content across the two versions of the site (in the event there is no budget to optimise the content for US and UK market)? Thank you all in advance for looking into this David
International SEO | | Davide19840 -
Google does not index UK version of our site, and serves US version instead. Do I need to remove hreflanguage for US?
Webmaster tools indicates that only 25% of pages on our UK domain with GBP prices is indexed.
International SEO | | lcourse
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?0 -
How can I change the currency Google lists my products with in the SERP?
I.e. This product - http://www.absoluteautomation.ca/fgd400-sensaphone400-p/fgd400.htm - shows up as USD in the SERP. (In the US it just won't show a currency, if Canada it will show USD on the SERP). My pricing is all in CAD, how can I tell Google this? (It knows pricing is CAD in my Google Product Listings/Merchant Center). Thanks!
International SEO | | absoauto0 -
Blocking domestic Google's in Robots.txt
Hey, I want to block Google.co.uk from crawling a site but want Google.de to crawl it. I know how to configure the Robots.txt to block Google and other engines - is there a fix to block certain domestic crawlers? any ideas? Thanks B
International SEO | | Bush_JSM0 -
What are the best practices for translation of city/state names for international SEO? (ie. New York in English vs. Nueva York in Spanish)
I'm working on international SEO / translation of a global travel site. While we have a global keyword research and translation strategy in process for each market they serve, I've run into a unique question. Overall, we are translating (and localizing) content for each market but aren't sure what to do with location names. Each country/state has cities and locations that have their own dedicated pages. I see three options for these location names (when titling a page and writing content): keep them in English, translate the names in the market languages, or use a combination of the two. The challenge with altering the location names to the market languages is that they are truly not known by those names. Though there are some instances where it may make sense…for instance **New York **in Spanish would be "Nueva York" with **‘**Nueva' being the Spanish translation of ‘new’. There are other instances, where no translation exists. If you’ve had a similar experience I'd love to hear your approach/recommendation.
International SEO | | JonClark150 -
How do I get a UK website to rank in Dubai?
We are trying to get a UK-based children's furniture website to rank in Dubai. We have had a couple of orders from wealthy expats in Dubai and it seems to be the correct target market. Does anyone have any specific knowledge of this area? We are promoting the same website as for the UK market. Also does anyone know any user behaviour stats on expatriates using search engines? Do they carry on using the version of Google they are used to, or do most change to the local version of Google? Thanks in advance
International SEO | | Wagada0 -
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 | | Corel0