Sitelinks (breadcrumbs) in SERPs
-
Hi there,
I have a .co.uk & .ie website both have the exact same content, only differences is the UK website is selling the product in pounds and the Irish website is selling in Euros plus both websites have different contact numbers.
I decided to use rel canonical on the .ie pointing to the .co.uk website as I think it was having an issue in my SERPs for the .co.uk website in Google.co.uk, anyway since doing this, I am seeing strange things happening in SERPs for my keywords, for example if you click the link below, my website is number 2 for 'hot flushes' if you hover over or click on 'health or 'menopause' in the breadcrumbs in SERPs it takes you to the .co.uk website, is this normal?
-
There's no ideal solution here, but I think you may have to try it, just to focus the ranking power and try to sort out what's going on.
-
Hi Peter,
I have removed the canonical tag from the .ie website.
Do you think I should use a 301 and then let's see what happens?
-
The 301 should override the canonical and hreflang, but if it were me I'd at least remove the canonical - I'm not a fan of mixed signals.
-
Hi Peter,
The canonical has been on the .ie website since mid July which I think is enough time, it could be that the fall in my SERPs for the .co.uk website is nothing to do with the .ie website.
Yes, I am not going to go ahead with the noindex, I just do not think it's a worthwhile exercise, however the 301 could be useful for testing purposes to see if it has a positive impact on the .co.uk SERPs.
If I use the 301, would you remove the canonical and hreflang tags?
-
The NOINDEX will take some time to remove and will kill your link equity (for now) - that's my main hesitation. I get why you don't want to 301, for user reasons. The canonical will still carry link-juice over. Personally, I think I'd give the canonical time - your current situation isn't ideal, but the NOINDEX could waste your inbound links and, now that you've canonical'ed, even harm the .co.uk site slightly. Better to give your .ie site visitors a path to the .co.uk site/prices and live with some minor Google hiccups, IMO.
The other simple reality is that, if Google isn't honoring the canonicals, they may ignore the NOINDEX tags or take a very long time to process them. The most definitive solution would be removal in Google Webmaster Tools, but that's pretty extreme.
-
Hi Peter,
Thanks again for your reply.
Yes, mixed signals indeed, it's causing me some headache. What information I have gathered over the last 6 months or so, is exactly what you have experienced technicians at Google all have different suggestions, what is clear is not one person really knows what is best practice.
I do not really want to do a 301 redirect as the Irish website really does have it's purpose, not just for SEO, but we do a lot of offline marketing in Ireland directing consumers to this website.
I have included a noindex on the .ie domain just for now to see if it does indeed have an impact on the .co.uk SERPs, I know it's far from ideal but this way I will be sure if the .ie is having a negative impact on .co.uk SERPs
I'm confident that once I remove the noindex from the .ie website if things do not work out, the Irish site will recover. Would you be totally against this method? I have got to mention the UK site is our main focus from an SEO point of view.
-
Yeah, it seems like Google is overriding the canonical, just based on the Google.ie connection, but it's really hard to tell. I'm actually conversing with some other SEOs about this same problem and Google's mixed signals on hreflang vs. canonical (or both together), and the answers aren't very clear. Different Google reps have given slightly different suggestions, and none of them are working consistently in all cases.
If you're going to drop the .ie website temporarily, I'd probably 301-redirect it. It's a little difficult to reverse, but at least you'll consolidate all of your link-juice and ranking factors for that site into the .co.uk site. If you just deindex the Irish domain, you'll lose what SEO value you've built to it.
-
Hi Peter,
In Google.ie the keyphrase 'hot flushes' if I looked at the cached version of this page, it shows the .co.uk website, is this a signal that Google is recognizing the canonical?
Ever since the .ie website went live I have had problems with my SERPs for the .co.uk website in Google.co.uk, however identifying that the .ie website is this issue is not so straight forward, even using the hreflang and rel canonical has proven unsuccessful in bringing back the SERPs for the .co.uk website, however I am just not sure Google has recognized these signals.
Would you advice in using a noindex on the .ie website just for temporary measures?, this way I can be sure one way or the other that .ie website has had a negative impact on my SERPs for the .co.uk website.
-
The only evidence is anecdotal. Google is recognizing the canonical in the breadcrumbs, but is ignoring it for the main site. My gut feeling is that they've decided the .ie website is the better match for Google.ie, and so they're ignoring the canonical in that case. There's no way to prove that other than inferring their intent from what we see in the results.
So, here's the question - if you're going the canonical route, you have to start asking if it's worth having two sites at all. If you're not going to let both sites rank, then they have limited utility. At that point, you might just want to 301-redirect to one, unified site, and focusing the link profiles and your SEO efforts.
Obviously, that's a big decision, and you could lose ground in the Irish market (on Google.ie), but by using the canonical, you've already started moving that direction. The hreflang tags are more subtle, which is why I recommended them initially. If your canonical implementation succeeds, you're basically suggesting Google only recognize one site in search results.
Cross-TLD/country, it is possible Google will continue to rank the Irish site on Google.ie even with the canonicals, but now you're leaving it open to their discretion. If you're comfortable with that, no problem. If you really want to consolidate, though, I wonder if it wouldn't be better to completely unify the sites and just make price a user option that Google doesn't see.
Unfortunately, this is a complex problem, and once Google starts mismatching the sites to TLDs, there's not an easy answer. I've seen many international SEOs who I respect struggle with this.
-
Hi Peter,
Thanks for your reply, very much appreciated.
You mention 'but it does seem like Google is selectively applying your canonical tag' would it be possible to show me evidence of this please?
Yes, we did discuss this before with the hreflang tag, however I never saw anything come from it. What I was testing is when I was copying a paragraph of text from the website and pasting it into Google.co.uk it was the .ie website that was appearing, however for no keywords was the .ie website outranking the .co.uk domain in Google.co.uk
'm not sure if I should give this any notice that when I copy a paragraph of text from the website into Google.co.uk that the .ie website appears, would you?
Since I placed the canonical tag on the .ie website, when I do the above 'copying and pasting a paragraph into Google.co.uk, it's now the .co.uk website that appears.
Another interesting point:
I am ranking no.2 in Google.ie and no.16 in Google.co.uk for the key term 'hot flushes' when I copy and paste the first paragraph of this page into Google.co.uk my website appears on page 2, even though the content in unique, when I do the same in Google.ie it's the .ie website that appears no.1 which is expected.
As I said I'm not sure if this is a signal that something is just not quite right with the website?
-
Just to clarify - you can use rel-canonical cross-domain, but it's use is a bit more restrictive and Google may ignore the tag in some cases. I haven't seen this particular issue before, but it does seem like Google is selectively applying your canonical tag.
Did the "hreflang" tags not help? I see you have them in place (I think we may have even discussed this on another question. That would be the more appropriate choice here, but again, Google's application isn't always consistent.
They deprecated the syndication-source tag, so short of 301-redirecting, the canonical tag is about your only other tool. Personally, I'd probably let Google stick with just the hreflang tags for a bit and drop the canonical, giving it a few weeks to see what happens, but it does depend on your goal. Google can be really stubborn about same-language content in nearby countries. We see it a lot with England/Ireland and Holland/Belgium.
-
Hi Sanket,
No where does it mention use can't use rel canonical for cross domain?
Can you give your reasons why you should not display this?
-
Dr Pete has written nice post on it :
Hope this help you out:
-
Hi Sanket,
Why can't I use it cross domain?, I am trying to tell Google that the original source of this content is the .co.uk website
-
Hi Gary,
One Suggestion: Canonical tag can't be used cross domain. I have checked "hot flushes" landing page and find canonical tag for co.uk site. Canonical tag can be used within the domain.
-
Hi Sanket,
Yes, if you click on the title, however just below the title where you have this:
health > menopause
If you click on one of the above it takes you to the .co.uk site.
Hope the above makes sense.
-
Hi,
I have open your site in my chrome and Firefox both browsers both shows same result, it open with this http://www.avogel.ie/health/menopause/hot-flushes/ if i searched your site 'hot flushes' so don't worry about that.
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
-
Description tag in code is different from what is shown in SERPS...
Hi there: We have a client whose website we built in WP, using Yoast Pro as our SEO plugin. I was reading some reports (actually coming out of SEMrush but we use Moz as well) and I am getting really varying results in the description are of the SERPS. Even though I'm seeing the copy we wrote in Yoast in the description tag code, the SERP is showing an excerpt from the copywriting on the site. What's even weirder is that SEMrush is pulling an entirely DIFFERENT description. I'm obviously missing out on the finer points of description tags, as Google clearly does not always choose to feature what is actually written in the description tag itself. Can someone explain to me what might be going on here? Thanks in advance,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Daaveey1 -
Adjusting Display of Sitelinks
I have a client that has some site links for their store but on of the links does not appear how it should. It should be a category that is all Capital letters but instead is appearing as initial Caps. I am guessing that this is due to anchor text somewhere on the site but for the life of me, I cannot find it appearing like this anywhere. Anything you think I might be missing here or should try? This is probably just something stupid I have overlooked.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DRSearchEngOpt
THANKS!0 -
Silo vs breadcrumbs in 2015
Hi ive heard silos being mentioned in the past to help with rankings does this still apply? and what about breadcrumbs do i use them with the silo technique or instead of which ones do you think are better or should i not be using these anymore with the recent google updates?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | juun0 -
Brand sections performing badly in SERP's but all SEO tools think we are great
I have had this problem for some time now and I've asked many many experts. Search for Falke in Google.co.uk and this is what you get: http://www.sockshop.co.uk/by_brand/falke/ 3rd Our competitor
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jpbarber
http://www.mytights.com/gb/brand/falke.html 4th Our competitor http://www.uktights.com/section/73/falke 104th this is us ????? 9th for Falke tights with same section not our falke tights section? All sites seem to link to their brand sections in the same way with links in the header and breadcrumbs, Opensite exporler only shows 2 or 3 internal links for our compertitors, 1600+ from us?
Many of our brand sections rank badly Pretty Polly and Charnos brands rank page 2 or 3 with a brand subsection with no links to them, main section dosn't rank? Great example is Kunert, a German brand no UK competition our section has been live for 8 years, the best we can do is 71st Google UK, 1st on Bing (as we should be). I'm working on adding some quality links, but our comtetitors have a few low quality or no external links, only slightly better domain authority but rank 100+ positions better than us on some brands. This to me would suggest there is something onpage / internal linking I'm doing wrong, but all tools say "well done, grade A" take a holiday. Keyword denisty is similar to our competiors and I've tried reducing the number of products on the page. All pages really ranked well pre Penguin, and Bing still likes them. This is driving me nuts and costing us money Cheers Jonathan
www.uktights.com1 -
Topical Sitelinks
This is a question about the non-branded, topical sitelinks SERP - i.e. those sitelinks without additional descriptive text, that tend to be shown for queries that are information centered as opposed to brand-centric. I'm been noticing an increase in these among some big brands in the travel vertical, and wanted to throw it out there to the esteemed Moz community. Are these the preserve of big site SEO/brands, or is there anything we can/should be doing to increase our chances of getting these topical sitelinks to appear? Cheers! rkdVaDN
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | linklater0 -
Local Showroom Tel Showing Up in SERP for Branded Term Search?
We encountered an issue: when user search for a branded term in UK on Google UK, one of the showroom got listed in SERP under site links as a location with Location icon and takes over a few lines - their address and phone number are displayed. This caused confusion for user as it's only one of our showrooms and we don't want to direct calls to the showroom this way. I'm suspecting somehow the localization factor came into play but not sure how to remove the showroom phone number from being displayed. Anyone has any insight/experience with this? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | b.digi0 -
Google+ Pages on Google SERP
Do you think that a Google+ Page (not profile) could appear on the Google SERP as a Rich Snippet Author? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | overalia0 -
Purchased new site with good SERP ranks, do I operate and build links or redirect the TLD?
I recently purchased a blog within my product category - it has many first page rankings for difficult keywords within my niche. I am wondering if it makes more sense for for me to continue to operate this blog and build links to my site and blog (blog is in wordpress) or to export the XML feed and upload the content to my blog (new site also in wordpress), at which point I would do a 301 at the Top-Level domain. Any thoughts, ideas, or personal experiences would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NickEubanks0