Should I establish a Webmaster Tools site per language?

[bearpaw]

Our company services multiple regions. Our website is setup for France, International (en-gb), Spanish, United States and China. The websites share a common template and format and menu tree but each has unique content.

Should I use a single Google Webmaster Tools site for all of these or establish each of them as a unique website?

[Mobilio]

In theory - yes, but here is how look in practicle:
http://www.stateofdigital.com/google-broken/
Just check examples with "bandwagon" or "carro". I'm not sure how this happen but i can often see similar results since our Bulgarian language is close to Russian. So in bulgarian SERP i can see sometimes russian results. Of course result is relevant, just different country.

I also have site related to Greek language. But this site can be visited from Cyprus and other worldwide locations due keywords. I can attach SearchConsole and Analytics screenshots if you don't believe it.

[bearpaw]

What is currently taking place is that in the US I am competing with my international english website for top spot and the international english website often wins. I was hoping that I could assign international targetting to each and that the effort would help Google point users to the most relavent content but according to https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en:

"This setting is only for geographic data. If you're targeting users in different locations—for example, if you have a site in French that you want users in France, Canada, and Mali to read—don't use this tool to set France as a geographic target. A good example of where it would be useful is for a restaurant website: if the restaurant is in Canada, it's probably not of interest to folks in France. But if your content is in French and is of interest to people in multiple countries/regions, it's probably better not to restrict it."

So, to answer my previous question it looks like this will often lock the results into the country.

[Mobilio]

I'm not sure because Canadian Quebec users for example can see .fr results in their SERP. Same can happen with Latin/South America and .es results. Just because language...

[bearpaw]

Thank you for your answer. In our case the following applies:

"If your website is using different folders with gTLDS (example.com/de;example.com/es;example.com/fr) - yes you can verify them and setup to specific geo-location."

For now, we won't be implementing HREFLANG tags but I am considering assigning each website in Webmaster Tools an International Targeting setting. If I assign this value, for example the french website to France, I shouldn't necessarily see the French website show up less in, let's say, Canadian French searches, correct?

[Mobilio]

• If your website is is using different ccTLD (.de/.es/.fr) domains - yes you can verify them and set to specific geo-location.
• If your website is using different gTLDS subdomains (de.example.com/es.example.com/fr.example.com) - yes you can verify them and setup to specific geo-location.
• If your website is using different folders with gTLDS (example.com/de;example.com/es;example.com/fr) - yes you can verify them and setup to specific geo-location.
• If your website is using url parameters (example.com/?hl=de;example.com/?hl=es;example.com/?hl=fr) - no you can verify them only once and setup to only one geo-location.

Whatever your structure is - please use hreflang to avoid duplicate content and provide even better experience for users and bots:

• https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag
• https://moz.com/blog/hreflang-behaviour-insights
• https://moz.com/blog/open-source-library-tool-check-hreflang