Different SERPs positions UK - Ireland
-
Hi there!
I've been checking rankings in UK and Ireland for the last months and I found something really interesting...
"Belfast + keyword" - UK = 2º position / Ireland = 1º position
"keyword + Belfast" - UK = 14º position / Ireland = 1º position
*(same keyword)
I don't understand how it is possible... Website is not geo-targeted so Google has no preference for any of these countries...
Any ideas about why does it happen?
-
Even though you don't have any geo-targeted sections, there are other indications on your site that let them know you are targeting Ireland and Google might be optimizing for that.
With that said, how are you checking these rankings? Do these keywords send you large amounts of traffic? Check Search Console. Are you having an issue getting UK traffic (North Ireland)? Are you worried about UK traffic due to North Ireland?
I am worried that what you are seeing is due to your own search history and settings and/or Google seeing the same search a few times and testing out different results. There might also be different competition in the Northern Ireland market. There is a ton that could explain this, but alas, as with most things SEO, it's hard to pinpoint.
-
Hi Matt,
Thanks for your response.
We are using a .com domain and we didn't set a specific location because website target Ireland & North Ireland (UK) so we try to rank in both "countries".
We are top 1 website in Google Ireland but Google UK doesn't love us sooo much.
-
Hi
Are you using an international domain such as .com or are you using a country specific domain as this is one obvious way Google can determine your location other than in Search Console. If you are using an international domain Google looks at several factors to determine your location including IP Address, any address listings on your site, Google My Business and even links to your site.
Have a look here - https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en
Hope this helps!
Matt
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
-
Google search operator "site:" show different result.
Search operator "site:" show incomplete information. When I search with just domain name it show only 3 link that got crawl in past week, this is the link https://www.google.com/?gfe_rd=cr&ei=mLr3VfrhN4_BuATQuYugBg&gws_rd=cr&fg=1#q=site:sierralivingconcepts.com&safe=off&tbs=qdr: but when i look a specific link it show them in any time (search tools), https://www.google.com/search?q=site:http://www.sierralivingconcepts.com/p-6300-white-silver-regence-louis-xiv-mango-wood-ornate-hall-console-table.aspx&safe=off&biw=1600&bih=775&noj=1&tbas=0&source=lnt&sa=X&ved=0CBUQpwVqFQoTCJ-4iOLK-McCFQFwjgod43gI9A But when i look in cached page it says "appeared on 11 Sep 2015" I am total confused why google not showing all the new link that it crawl from my site.
Search Behavior | | Sierra-Living-Concepts0 -
Do sever errors affect SERPS
hoping someone can help VPS has been causing me 10 days of server errors (im now moving off it) as my wordpress site has kept running out of memory. At the same time my traffic had dropped. Could google and bing be penalising me for number of errors, dropping me in SERPS and resulting in web traffic?
Search Behavior | | mutant20080 -
Page ranking in .com but not in .co.uk
Hi there, I tried to search the Q&A but couldn't find any answers to my issue. We have a page that is ranking #2 for the term "translation memory" in google.com, but it doesn't show in Google.co.uk. This has been like this for weeks now. We are not targeting any specific country in GWT. Does anyone know a possible explanation for this? Thank you.
Search Behavior | | SDLOnlineChannel0 -
All pages were returning 404 for an hour. Will it impact the SERPS?
Hi, Due to a bug in my website system, all the pages were returning an 404 default page for a period of 1 hour. Can this event impact the SERPs of this site? (the site is heavily visited, more than 500k users coming from google every day, so I assume google crawls my pages every moment)
Search Behavior | | lucasms0 -
UK & Ireland Websites displaying same page differently in serps
Hi there, I have a Magento Enterprise store based in the UK and we have an Irish version which we created after finding an increasing amount of traffic from Ireland. One thing that I don't understand, is that if I search for one keyword on Google, the websites are displayed differently, when effectively they are identical websites. Here is how a result looks like for my UK store: http://i.imgur.com/NKSt4Qq.png And here is how a result looks like for my IE store: http://i.imgur.com/Cynv8Mz.png They both have the same Meta description, barring a few geographical words and terms. Both have on page descriptions as well as products. Yet the IE results display the description and the UK results display products and a tiny snippet of the description. Any ideas on how I can make my UK pages display like the IE one? Or, just why they are both displayed differently? Thanks
Search Behavior | | tomhall900 -
Spammy website dominating SERPs! Why!?
Hey guys, I've recently noticed that a series of EMDs have been setup to completely spam an extensive set of keywords - and it seems to be working. All of the URLs are keyword targeted with tons of keyword variations. And they're getting massive ranking preference over a number of more established websites. These are just an example of some of the domains; diykitchens1.co.uk fittedkitchens1.co.uk cheapkitchens1.co.uk kitchenunits1.co.uk And then there's loads of local targeted domains such as; kitchensglasgow1.co.uk kitchensedinburgh1.co.uk Again, all of these are getting high ranking with what seems to be duplicated websites. It's pretty bizarre. Will Google penalise these sites? Surely they will?
Search Behavior | | Webrevolve0 -
Two sites with different URLs
I help organize an ecommerce site for a company that is named after the state that the company was founded in (ex: Florida Pipes). Our programmer is thinking about creating a duplicate site that would have a name that was more location agnostic so people shopping on the site would not think that they may be ordering from far away hence incurring extra shipping charges. He said that the site would only have a different URLs, name and homepage but would link to all of the same stuff that is on the site that is up now. He said that there would be no way to tell (possibly for the layperson) that the two sites were related. Is this a good practice? Would we be penalized in search results for having two URLs linking to the same content? (We are a 30 year old company that ranks very high for our main keyword) Thank you for your input!
Search Behavior | | Winoman0 -
SERPs changing on an hourly basis
Hi Mozzers, Can anyone help me please. I have a client that is ranking in position 2 for his major keyword in G.co.uk. He's been moving up but over the last 7 - 10 days he's moved down, then back up and around and around the front page which we all know can happen. The thing is - this is changing through the day 4 or 5 times in some cases. I've checked when the first page of the SERPs have been indexed via the cached button and normally Google hasn't crawled the competition or my guys site on the given day the changes happen, yet he's been 2, 5 and 7 and back to 2 in about 3 hours. Are these social signals do you think? whats going on - any ideas? Cheers Bush
Search Behavior | | Bush_JSM0