US domain pages showing up in Google UK SERP
-
Hi,
Our website which was predominantly for UK market was setup with a .com extension and only two years ago other domains were added - US (.us) , IE (.ie), EU (.eu) & AU (.com.au)
Last year in July, we noticed that few .us domain urls were showing up in UK SERPs and we realized the sitemap for .us site was incorrectly referring to UK (.com) so we corrected that and the .us domain urls stopped appearing in the SERP. Not sure if this actually fixed the issue or was such coincidental.
However in last couple of weeks more than 3 .us domain urls are showing for each brand search made on Google UK and sometimes it replaces the .com results all together. I have double checked the PA for US pages, they are far below the UK ones.
Has anyone noticed similar behaviour &/or could anyone please help me troubleshoot this issue?
Thanks in advance,
R
-
As your own agency told, I too consider that when the hreflang will be implemented, this kind of issues should terminate.
Regarding the sitemap error, it was surely something that could be confusing Google about what site to target.
However, I see that you have also an .eu domain name...
I imagine that that domain is meant for targeting the European market and I suspect that it is in English.
If it is so, remember:
- In countries like Spain, France, Germany, italy... we don't search in Internet using English, but Spanish, French, German, Italian... Therefore, that .eu domain is not going to offer you those results you maybe are looking for;
- The .eu domain termination is a generic one, and cannot be geotargeted via Google Search Console. This means that - by default - it targets all the world, hence, you probably can see visits from English speaking users in countries like South Africa, UK, IE, Australia, New Zealand or India, where English is the main language or one of the official ones;
- When it comes to domains like .eu and hreflang, it is always hard to decide how to implement it. In your specific case, as you are targeting UK, US, AU and IE with specific domain names, the ideal would be to implement this hreflang annotation for the .eu (the example is only for the home page):
<rel="alternate" href="http://www.domain.eu" hreflang="x-default"><rel="alternate" href="http://www.domain.eu" hreflang="en"><rel="alternate" href="http://www.domain.com" hreflang="en-GB"><rel="alternate" href="http://www.domain.us" hreflang="en-US"><rel="alternate" href="http://www.domain.com.au" hreflang="en-AU"></rel="alternate"></rel="alternate"></rel="alternate"></rel="alternate"></rel="alternate">
With those annotations, you are telling Google to show the .com to users in Great Britain, the .us to users in United States, the .au to Australian ones and the .eu to all the other users using English in any other country.
That will mean that your .eu site surely will target also users in others European countries, both using english when searching (hreflang="en") and other languages (hreflang="x-default").
2 notes about the hreflang="x-default":
-
People living in the UK and searching in Spanish will see the .eu domain name, because it is the default domain name for searches in every language but English in GB, IE, AU and US;
-
Again, even if you pretend the .eu domain to target only European countries, that is impossible, because the .eu termination doesn't have any geotargeting power (and regions like Europe or Asia cannot be geotargeted via GSC). So it will be normal to see visit also from countries in others continents.
-
You're very welcome. Either way I'd be interested to see how this one progresses.
-
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your quick response and detailing out this well.
I have backdated and noticed that this occurs almost every six months. The US domain urls pop up in the UK SERPs for about 2 weeks and disappear after that. We are yet to implement the href lang tags on site and our SEO agency confirm that this should fix the issue.
Will keep this thread updated on the outcome.
Cheers,
RG
-
Whether or not this is an issue kind of depends on what your product or service is. If you provide a local-only service like a restaurant then your US site ranking in the UK would be unusual.
On the other hand, if you sell a physical product this may not be so unusual. For example, here in Australia we're quite limited when it comes to finding men's online clothing stores, most of it comes from the US or the UK so it's not uncommon to see something like the US Jackthreads show up in the SERPs here.
Since you do have separate domains for each location, this might be an indication that search engines aren't really understanding the different jurisdictions for each site; maybe they're not geo-targeted enough for the algorithm to comprehend the fact that each of the 3 sites server a unique area.
Some of the elements that can help define this, in no particular order:
- Server location
- HTML language ( e.g. lang="en-US")
- Regional language differences (e.g. US spelling vs UK)
- Location markup - on your location pages at the very least
- Location mentions throughout your content
While not specifically on-topic, Rand's Whiteboard Friday about scaling geo-targeting offers plenty of great advice that can be applied here as well.
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
-
Internal pages ranking over the homepage: How to optimise to rank better at Google?
Hi, We have experienced a shift in SERP from internal pages ranking over website homepage for more than a year. Previously website homepages used to rank for the primary keyword like moz.com for "SEO". Now we can see that internal pages like moz.com/learn/seo/what-is-seo been ranking for the primary keyword "SEO". Google is picking up these "what is ABC" pages than the homepage. All our competitor sites are ranking with these internal pages which are about "what is (primary keyword)". We do have the same internal pages "what is....", but this pages is not ranking; only our homepage is ranking. Moreover we dropped more than 15 positions after this shift in SERP. How to diagnose this? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Do back-links to non indexed sub-domains / sub-directories considered by Google as website backlinks and pass Pagerank to website?
Hi, If some noindexed links on our website or sub-domain got some backlinks, will that backlinks pass Pagerank / linkjuice to website? Will they be considered as backlinks to website by Google? Here is a statement from Matt cutts for the question. My question is same as below with answer? Eric Enge: Can a NoIndex page accumulate PageRank? Matt Cutts: A NoIndex page can accumulate PageRank, because the links are still followed outwards from a NoIndex page. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Google Mobile Algorithm update
Hi there, On April the 21st Google seems to going to update their Mobile algorithm. I have a few questions about this one. Our current mobile website is very mobile friendly. We block all mobile pages with a noindex, so the desktop pages have been indexed on mobile devices. We use a redirect from desktop page to mobile page when someone hits a result on a mobile device. My gut tells me this is not April 21st-proof so I'm thinking about an update to make this whole thing adaptive. By making the thing adaptive, our mobile pages will be indexed instead of the desktop pages. Two questions: Will Google treat the mobile page as a 100% different page than the desktop page? Or will it match those two because everything will tell Google those belong together. In other words: will the mobile page start with a zero authority and will pages lose good organic positions because of authority or not? Which ranking factor will be stronger after April 21st for mobile pages: page authority or mobile friendliness? In other words: is it worth ignoring the 21 April update because the authority of the desktop pages is more important than making every page super mobile friendly? Hope to get some good advice! Marcel
Algorithm Updates | | MarcelMoz0 -
Home page rank for keyword
Hi Mozers I have traded from my website balloon.co.uk for over 10 years. For a long while the site ranked first for the word 'balloon' across the UK on google.co.uk (first out of 41 million). Around the time Penguin launched the site began to drop and currently sits on about page 5. What's confusing is that for a search on 'balloons' ('s' on the end of balloon) it ranks 2nd in the location of Birmingham where I'm based. That's 2nd in the real search rather than a map local search. But - if I search 'balloon' from the location of Birmingham my contact page ranks 5th: http://www.balloon.co.uk/contact.htm but the home page ranks nowhere. So - it's gone from ranking 1st nationally to ranking nowhere with my contact page ranking above the home page (which is a generic word domain). Any ideas?
Algorithm Updates | | balloon.co.uk0 -
Does this mean my pages are ranking better?
In GWT impressions are down 17%, clicks are up 57%. Is it safe to assume that pages are ranking better for my site? We have earned a couple great links in the past month.. 5lDZEUJ
Algorithm Updates | | Theskimonster0 -
Wrong Google pin locations
Did something happen recently that would affect pin locations on Google Maps? I've been updating Google Places pages, but not touching the address or pins - but I received a phone call from one of my locations that their pin location changed in the past month and now it is wrong. Meanwhile, another department recently had MomentFeed update the pins for accuracy. Thoughts?
Algorithm Updates | | SSFCU0 -
Increased importance given to spammy/educational domains in SERPs!?
Hey guys, Can anyone shed some light on these bizarre and confusing SERPs which Google seems to be producing following their latest update?? For example, we have a client who targets "payday loans" with another targeting "IT services". However, since the update, the former keyword brings back a host of spammy domain results while the latter seems to have given all focus to educational institutions like universities. This just seems utterly ludicrous considering that if I'm searching for "IT services" I don't want the help desk of a local university - that's completely irrelevant, right? Can anyone provide some information on what seems to be going on? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | Webrevolve0 -
Lesser visited, but highly ranked landing paged dropped in rank on Google. Time for a content update?
I noticed that my page one ranked landing pages that don't get a lot of love from me have dropped in rank big time on Google this week. This is a site that has static (meaning, I can't freshen up the content easily) landing pages for products that we sell. The pages that dropped are the ones that have the fewest inbound links, and don't get much attention on the social media side. Our most important landing pages have also dropped, but just a few spots on page one. This is a first for me. Does anyone think that this is a "lack of freshness" penalty? We are still number one on page one for our brand search terms. Would fresh content give me a shot at getting the pages back up? I'm willing to update them slowly, but before I go crazy, I'm reaching out to the pros here.
Algorithm Updates | | Ticket_King0