Hreflang problem?

[Yeeply.com]

Hello,

We do have a client with a site in multiple versions (one domain per country). French and Spanish versions work really fine, but the problem comes up with the .com and .co.uk versions.

This is my hreflang piece of code:

When I go to Google.co.uk and search the exact match domain keyword "how much cost an app", I only find the howmuchcostanapp.com domain (1st or 2nd page) instead of howmuchcostanapp.co.uk. The UK one is not appearing! This is very strange. I have spent a lot of time trying to solve this, but I don't know what else to do.

Thanks a lot in advance for your comments and help!

[NickJasuja]

No, the hreflang tag is to indicate that the content is localized for a certain market (language + geo). If you simply use hreflang tags without genuinely localizing your content, Google might treat it as duplicate. See John Mueller's answer here where he clearly says this exact thing:

https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/webmasters/ezMvrlRWuDk/6XWuM1fIDgA

[DmitriiK]

Well, that's why you use hreflang tag.

[NickJasuja]

What I meant is that the 2 pages https://www.howmuchcostanapp.co.uk andhttps://www.howmuchcostanapp.com are duplicates of each other. They have not localized the en-GB site for English-speakers in the UK. So when Googlebot sees these 2 pages it might treat them as duplicates.

[DmitriiK]

"The en and en-GB sites are duplicates of each other" - not true at all. "en" is for all english speaking users, "en-GB" is for english speaking users in Britain.

Here is Google's Article: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

[NickJasuja]

The en and en-GB sites are duplicates of each other. Without going through the entire questionnaire, you wouldn't know that one site gives you a quote in GBP and the other in USD. So as far as Googlebot is concerned, there is no difference between the en and en-GB sites. You haven't really localized the en-GB site for users in GB.

In such cases of duplicate content, Google sometimes (not always) ignores the Hreflang directive and just shows the stronger domain in SERPs.

By the way, you also have an error in your hreflang implementation. The tags for pt and pt-PT are mismatched on some of the pages. https://app.hreflang.org/results.php?runid=09c39ec6653fbefafe14b0cfe880d3ab20161031214914

[DmitriiK]

Howdy!

Question - Are you just searching in google.co.uk or you are indeed in UK when searching? Because, as far as I know, hreflang is tailored towards your browser settings and location, rather than what google you are searching in. Example: if I'm in Germany with my laptop and searching for a local branch in Google.com, i want results in Germany, but in English. And vice versa - if I'm in US and searching in google.de - I'm most likely to be searching for business in US, but in German language.

Hope this makes sense