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.
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
-
My site is showing indexed in search console but not appearing in Serps
hi, i have recently made sites.google site and submitted to search console but when I copy paste in google , its not appearing
Algorithm Updates | | alan-shultis0 -
Key webpage fluctuating between page 2 and page 6 of Google SERP
Hi, We have found that one of our key webpages has been fluctuating between page 2 and page 6 of Google SERP for around 2 weeks. Some days it will be on page 6 in the morning and then page 2 in the afternoon. We have recently updated some copy on the page and wondered if this could be the cause. Has anyone else experienced this? If so how long was it before the page settled? https://www.mrisoftware.com/uk/products/property-management-software/ Thanks.
Algorithm Updates | | nfrank0 -
Site appearing and disappearing from google serps.
Hi, My website is normally on page 2-3 on google consistently. Over the past month it has been appearing and then completely disappearing from the serps. One day it will be on page 2, then the next day completely missing from the serps. When i check the index it seems to be indexed correctly when doing site:mysite.com. I don't understand why this keeps happening, any experience with this issue? It doesn't seem to be a google dance as far as I can tell. When my other sites dance they typically just go up or down a few ranks for a couple weeks until they stabilize. Not completely fall off the search engine.
Algorithm Updates | | Chris_www0 -
How often should I update the content on my pages?
I have started dropping on my rankings - due to lack of time after having a baby. I'm still managing to blog but I'm wondering if I update the content on my pages will that help? All my Meta tags and page descriptions were updated over a year ago - do I need to update these too? We were ranking in the top spots for a good few years, but we're slowly falling 😞 Please give me any advice to keep us from falling even further. I have claimed all my listings, and try to add new links once a month. I share my blog to all social sites and work hard to get Google reviews, we have 53 which is higher than any of our competitors. Any other ideas? Have I missed something that Google is looking for nowadays? Many thanks 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | Lauren16890 -
Dates appear before home page description in the SERPs- HUGE drop in rankings
We have been on the first page of Google for a number of years for search terms including 'SEO Agency', 'SEO Agency London' etc. A few months ago we made some changes to the design of the home page (added a blog feed), and made changes to the website sitemap. Two days ago (two months after last site changes were made) we dropped subsantially in the SERPs for all home page keywords. Where we are found, a date appears before the description in the SERPs, dating February 2012 (which is when we launched the original website). The site has been through a revamp since then, yet it still shows 2012. This has been followed by a few additional strange things, including the sitelinks that Google is choosing to show (which including author bio pages showing in homepage site links), and googling our brand name no longer brings up sitelinks in the SERPs. The problem only affects the home page. All other pages are performing as standard. When Penguin 4.0 came out we saw a noted improvement in our SERP performance, and our backlinks are good and quality, largely from PR efforts. Of course, I would be interested in additional pairs of eyes on the back links to see if anyone thinks that I have missed anything! We have 3 of our senior SEOs working on trying to figure out what is going on and how to resolve it, but I would be very interested if anyone has any thoughts?
Algorithm Updates | | GoUp3 -
Ecommerce SEO: Is it bad to link to product/category pages directly from content pages?
Hi ! In Moz' Whiteboard friday video Headline Writing and Title Tag SEO in a Clickbait World, Rand is talking about (among other things) best practices related to linking between search, clickbait and conversion pages. For a client of ours, a cosmetics and make-up retailer, we are planning to build content pages around related keywords, for example video, pictures and text about make-up and fashion in order to best target and capture search traffic related to make-up that is prevalent earlier in the costumer journey. Among other things, we plan to use these content pages to link directly to some of the products. For example a content piece about how to achieve full lashes will to link to particular mascaras and/or the mascara category) Things is, in the Whiteboard video Rand Says:
Algorithm Updates | | Inevo
_"..So your click-bait piece, a lot of times with click-bait pieces they're going to perform worse if you go over and try and link directly to your conversion page, because it looks like you're trying to sell people something. That's not what plays on Facebook, on Twitter, on social media in general. What plays is, "Hey, this is just entertainment, and I can just visit this piece and it's fun and funny and interesting." _ Does this mean linking directly to products pages (or category pages) from content pages is bad? Will Google think that, since we are also trying to sell something with the same piece of content, we do not deserve to rank that well on the content, and won't be considered that relevant for a search query where people are looking for make-up tips and make-up guides? Also.. is there any difference between linking from content to categories vs. products? ..I mean, a category page is not a conversion page the same way a products page is. Looking forward to your answers 🙂0 -
Winning The New SERP Battle
I run a niche website (www.picnic-basket.com) that is approaching 10 years old. I have consistently added new content, performed redesigns, etc and WAS rewarded with a #1 placement on Google for my main keyword phrase for quite a long time. All our links are natural, no link-farms and I don't do exchanges either. I blog, write articles about our niche, have free cookbooks, delicious recipes and are always finding cool new products. FB & Twitter are also maintained. After Panda I'm now below the fold with amazon.com, bedbathandbeyond.com, worldmarket.com, overstock.com and brookstone.com all above me. These sites don't have anything to do with my niche other than just selling some items. ROI is horrible for me with PPC on this keyword phrase. I'm sure Googles' revenue has increased quite a bit in this category because users only see relevant websites up in the paid area. Through years of hard work I was finally able to beat my old niche competitors but I'm left wondering, How do I beat the "Big Boys"? Any advice for someone like me?
Algorithm Updates | | sunriseb0 -
Home page replaced by subpage in google SERP (good or bad)
SInce Panda, We have seen our home page drop from #2 in google.ie serp to page 3 but it has been replaced in the same position @#2 by our relevent sub page for the keyword that we ranked#2 for. Is this a good or bad thing from and seo point of view and is it better to have deep pages show in serp rather than the homepage of a site and what is the best line of action from here in relation to seo. Is it best to work on subpage or home page for that keyword and should link building for that phrase be directed towards the subpage or the homepage as the subpage is obviously more relevent in googles eyes for the search term. It is clear that all areas of the site should be looked at in relation to link building and deep links etc but now that google is obviously looking at relevancy very closely should all campaigns be sectioned into relevent content managed sections and the site likewise and treated on an individual basis. Any help that you may have would be very welcome. Paul
Algorithm Updates | | mcintyr0