Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. International SEO
    4. Google does not index UK version of our site, and serves US version instead. Do I need to remove hreflanguage for US?

    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.

    Google does not index UK version of our site, and serves US version instead. Do I need to remove hreflanguage for US?

    International SEO
    3
    15
    3586
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • lcourse
      lcourse last edited by

      Webmaster tools indicates that only 25% of pages on our UK domain with GBP prices is indexed.
      We have another US domain with identical content but USD prices which is indexed fine.

      When I search in google for site:mydomain I see that most of my pages seem to appear, but then in the rich snippets google shows USD prices instead of the GBP prices which we publish on this page (USD price is not published on the page and I tested with an US proxy and US price is nowhere in the source code).

      Then I clicked on the result in google to see cached version of page and google shows me as cached version of the UK product page the US product page.

      I use the following hreflang code: rel="alternate" hreflang="en-US" href="https://www.domain.com/product" />
      rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" href="https://www.domain.co.uk/product" />

      canonical of UK page is correctly referring to UK page.

      Any ideas? Do I need to remove the hreflang for en-US to get the UK domain properly indexed in google?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • lcourse
        lcourse @Christy-Correll last edited by

        Hi Christy, not yet.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Christy-Correll
          Christy-Correll Staff last edited by

          Hi there, have you been able to figure out this riddle yet -- or are you still working on it? We'd love an update!

          Christy 🙂

          lcourse 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • lcourse
            lcourse @VERBInteractive last edited by

            Thanks. Will post an update once we figured out this riddle.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • VERBInteractive
              VERBInteractive last edited by

              Worth a try, specifically since nothing else seems to be working at this point.

              Sorry I couldn't be more help. Please let us know what the solution is when ever you figure it out.

              lcourse 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • lcourse
                lcourse @VERBInteractive last edited by

                No.

                But in theroy it should not make a difference.
                hreflang can be either implemented in sitemap or in page.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • VERBInteractive
                  VERBInteractive last edited by

                  Do your sitemaps indicate the varying languages. See: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en

                  https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en

                  lcourse 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • lcourse
                    lcourse @VERBInteractive last edited by

                    Thanks for checking. Yes, rich snippets are frequently not showing currently, however this is a different issue and it may be temporary.

                    My primary concern is rather that google does not index our sitemap for this domain according to search console and related that they show the .com page as cached version of the .uk page.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • VERBInteractive
                      VERBInteractive last edited by

                      Very odd, when we do a search for "Adorini Firenze - Deluxe" in google UK with a VPN on for the UK it doesn't get any of the price schema markup. Maybe google is having a hard time deciding what to do with the schema so for normal results it doesn't pull any of the schema. What KW are ranking for this page? do you get similar results as us?

                      https://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&ie=UTF-8&q=Adorini Firenze - Deluxe&oq=Adorini Firenze - Deluxe&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l3j69i60l2.943j0j7&rct=j

                      lcourse 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • lcourse
                        lcourse @VERBInteractive last edited by

                        Happens already for many months.

                        Good idea to test with VPN. I just gave it a try with a UK proxy  and same result.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • VERBInteractive
                          VERBInteractive last edited by

                          odd, looks to pull the cached schema, the issue might correct itself with time.

                          It's a bit of a long shot, but have you tried the lang/country codes completely in lower case? I doubt that will fix it but the tool in this Moz article I found (https://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool) generates them in all lower case.

                          Also out of curiosity are you doing your test searches through a VPN?

                          https://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool

                          lcourse 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • lcourse
                            lcourse @VERBInteractive last edited by

                            Sure, click on cached version of the first result in the following google search. Also you see here the rich snippets in USD instead of GBP:

                            https://www.google.es/search?q=site%3Ahumidordiscount.co.uk&oq=site%3Ahumidordiscount.co.uk&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.6216j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=site:humidordiscount.co.uk+firenze

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • VERBInteractive
                              VERBInteractive last edited by

                              Well at least we checked off one thing that it is not. 🙂

                              Can you provide a link to the SERP where you are seeing the issue?

                              lcourse 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • lcourse
                                lcourse last edited by

                                everything looks fine  in google search console.

                                no hreflang errors, no sitemap errors and google crawls every day basically all our pages for many months already.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • VERBInteractive
                                  VERBInteractive last edited by

                                  Odd, are you seeing any errors in Google Search Console (use to be Google webmaster tools) under Search Traffic/International Targeting. It will show any hreflang errors, I would start there and fix any errors.

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                  • 1 / 1
                                  • First post
                                    Last post

                                  Got a burning SEO question?

                                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                                  Start my free trial


                                  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.

                                  • See all categories

                                  Related Questions

                                  • Avid_Demand

                                    Hreflang tags and canonical tags - might be causing indexing and duplicate content issues

                                    Hi, Let's say I have a site located at https://www.example.com, and also have subdirectories setup for different languages. For example: https://www.example.com/es_ES/ https://www.example.com/fr_FR/ https://www.example.com/it_IT/ My Spanish version currently has the following hreflang tags and canonical tag implemented: My robots.txt file is blocking all of my language subdirectories. For example: User-agent:* Disallow: /es_ES/ Disallow: /fr_FR/ Disallow: /it_IT/ This setup doesn't seem right. I don't think I should be blocking the language-specific subdirectories via robots.txt What are your thoughts? Does my hreflang tag and canonical tag implementation look correct to you? Should I be doing this differently? I would greatly appreciate your feedback and/or suggestions.

                                    International SEO | | Avid_Demand
                                    0
                                  • lcourse

                                    How to interlink 16 different language versions of site?

                                    I remember that Matt Cutts recommended against interlinking many language versions of a site.
                                    Considering that google now also crawls javascript links, what is best way to implement interlinking? I still see otherwhise extremely well optimized large sites interlinking to more than 10 different language versions e.g. zalando.de, but also booking.com (even though here on same domain). Currently we have an expandable css dropdown in the footer interlinking 16 different language versions with different TLD. Would you be concerned? What would you suggest how to interlink domains (for user link would be useful)?

                                    International SEO | | lcourse
                                    0
                                  • peteboyd

                                    What is the proper way to setup hreflang tags on my English and Spanish site?

                                    I have a full English website at http://www.example.com and I have a Spanish version of the website at http://spanish.example.com but only about half of the English pages were translated and exist on the Spanish site. Should I just add a sitemap to both sites with hreflang tags that point to the correct version of the page? Is this a proper way to set this up? I was going to repeat this same process for all of the applicable URLs that exist on both versions of the website (English and Spanish). Is it okay to have hreflang="es" or do I need to have a country code attached as well? There are many Spanish speaking countries and I don't know if I need to list them all out. For example hreflang="es-bo" (Bolivia), hreflang="es-cl" (Chile), hreflang="es-co" (Columbia), etc... Sitemap example for English website URL:
                                    <url><loc>http://www.example.com/</loc></url> Sitemap example for Spanish website URL:
                                    <url><loc>http://spanish.example.com/</loc></url> Thanks in advance for your feedback and help!

                                    International SEO | | peteboyd
                                    0
                                  • Alex.Weintraub

                                    Auto-Redirecting Homepage on Multilingual Site

                                    The website has an auto-redirecting homepage on a multilingual site. Here is some background: User visits the site for first time > sent to javascript age verification page with country of origin selector. If selects "France" then served French page (.com/fr-fr/). If selects any other country, then served English page (.com/en-int/). A cookie is set, and next time the user visits the site, they are automatically served the appropriate language URL. 1st Question: .com/ essentially does not exist. It is being redirected to .com/en-int/ as this is the default page. Should this be a 301 redirect since I want this to serve as the new homepage? 2nd Question:. In the multilingual sitemap, should I still set .com/ as the hreflang="x-default" even though the user is automatically redirected to a language directory? According to Google, as just released here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2014/05/creating-right-homepage-for-your.html "automatically serve the appropriate HTML content to your users depending on their location and language settings. You will either do that by using server-side 302 redirects or by dynamically serving the right HTML content. Remember to use x-default rel-alternate-hreflang annotation on the homepage / generic page even if the latter is a redirect page that is not accessible directly for users." So, this is where I am not clear.  If use a 302 redirect of .com/ to either .com/en-int/ or .com/fr-fr/, won't I then lose the inbound link value and DA/PA of .com/ if I just use a 302? Note: there is no .com/ at this moment. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks,Alex

                                    International SEO | | Alex.Weintraub
                                    0
                                  • Ben.JD

                                    If I redirect based on IP will Google still crawl my international sites if I implement Hreflang

                                    We are setting up several international sites. Ideally, we wouldn't set up any redirects, but if we have to (for merchandising reasons etc) I'd like to assess what the next best option would be. A secondary option could be that we implement the redirects based on IP. However, Google then wouldn't be able to access the content for all the international sites (we're setting up 6 in total) and would only index the .com site. I'm wondering whether the Hreflang annotations would still allow Google to find the International sites? If not, that's a lot of content we are not fully benefiting from. Another option could be that we treat the Googlebot user agent differently, but this would probably be considered as cloaking by the G-Man. If there are any other options, please let me know.

                                    International SEO | | Ben.JD
                                    0
                                  • Awaraman

                                    Redirect the main site to keyword-rich subfolder / specific page for SEO

                                    Hi, I have two questions. Question 1: is it worthwhile to redirect the main site to keyword-rich subfolder / specific page for SEO? For example, my company's webpage is www.example.com. Would it make sense to redirect (301) the main site to address www.example.com/service-one-in-certain-city ? I am asking this as I have learned that it is important for SEO to have keywords in the URL, and I was thinking that we could do this and include the most important keywords to the subfolder / specific URL. What are the pros and cons of this? Should I create folders or pages just the sake of keywords? Question 2: Most companies have their main URL shown as www.example.com when you access their domain. However, some multi-language sites show e.g. www.example.com/en or www.example.com/en/main when you type the domain to your web browser to access the site. I understand that this is a common practice to use subdomains or folders to separate different language versions. My question is regarding subfolders. Is it better to have only the subfolder shown (www.example.com/en) or should I also include the specific page's URL after the subfolder with keywords (www.example.com/en/main or www.example.com/en/service-one-in-certain-city)? I don't really understand why some companies show only the subfolder of a specific language page and some the page's URL after the subfolder. Thanks in advance, Sam

                                    International SEO | | Awaraman
                                    1
                                  • Lina-iWeb

                                    Massive jump in pages indexed (and I do mean massive)

                                    Hello mozzers, I have been working in SEO for a number of years but never seen anything like a jump in pages indexed of this proportion (image is from the Index Status report in Google Webmaster Tools: http://i.imgur.com/79mW6Jl.png Has anyone has ever seen anything like this?
                                    Anyone have an idea about what happened?
                                    One thing that sprung to mind might be that the same pages are now getting indexed in several more google country sites (e.g. google.ca, google.co.uk, google.es, google.com.mx) but I don't know if the Index Status report in WMT works like that. A few notes to explain the context: It's an eCommerce website with service pages and around 9 different pages listing products. The site is small - only around 100 pages across three languages 1.5 months ago we migrated from three language subdomains to a single sub-domain with language directories. Before and after the migration I used hreflang tags across the board. We saw about 50% uplift in traffic from unbranded organic terms after the migration (although on day one it was more like +300%), especially from more language diversity. I had an issue where the 'sort' links on the product tables were giving rise to thousands of pages of duplicate content, although I had used the URL parameter handling to communicate to Google that these were not significantly different and only to index the representative URL. About 2 weeks ago I blocked them using the robots.txt (Disallow: *?sort). I never felt these were doing us too much harm in reality although many of them are indexed and can be found with a site:xxx.com search. At the same time as adding *?sort to the robots.txt, I made an hreflang sitemap for each language, and linked to them from an index sitemap and added these to WMT. I added some country specific alternate URLs as well as language just to see if I started getting more traffic from those countries (e.g. xxx.com/es/ for Spanish, xxx.com/es/ for Spain, xxx.xom/es/ for Mexico etc). I dodn't seem to get any benefit from this. Webmaster tools profile is for a URL that is the root domain xxx.com. We have a lot of other subdomains, including a blog that is far bigger than our main site. But looking at the Search Queries report, all the pages listed are on the core website so I don't think it is the blog pages etc. I have seen a couple of good days in terms of unbranded organic search referrals - no spike or drop off but a couple of good days in keeping with recent improvements in these kinds of referrals. We have some software mirror sub domains that are duplicated across two website: xxx.mirror.xxx.com and xxx.mirror.xxx.ca. Many of these don't even have sections and Google seemed to be handling the duplication, always preferring to show the .com URL despite no cross-site canonicals in place. Very interesting, I'm sure you will agree! THANKS FOR READING! 79mW6Jl.png

                                    International SEO | | Lina-iWeb
                                    0
                                  • Envoke-Marketing

                                    What countries does Google crawl from? Is it only US or do they crawl from Europe and Asia, etc.?

                                    Where does Google crawl the web from? Is it in the US only, or do they do it from a European base too? The reason for asking is for GeoIP redirection. For example, if a website is using GeoIP redirection to redirect all US traffic to a .com site and all EU traffic to a .co.uk site, will Google ever see the .co.uk site?

                                    International SEO | | Envoke-Marketing
                                    2

                                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                                  Start my free trial
                                  Products
                                  • Moz Pro
                                  • Moz Local
                                  • Moz API
                                  • Moz Data
                                  • STAT
                                  • Product Updates
                                  Moz Solutions
                                  • SMB Solutions
                                  • Agency Solutions
                                  • Enterprise Solutions
                                  • Digital Marketers
                                  Free SEO Tools
                                  • Domain Authority Checker
                                  • Link Explorer
                                  • Keyword Explorer
                                  • Competitive Research
                                  • Brand Authority Checker
                                  • Local Citation Checker
                                  • MozBar Extension
                                  • MozCast
                                  Resources
                                  • Blog
                                  • SEO Learning Center
                                  • Help Hub
                                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                                  • How-to Guides
                                  • Moz Academy
                                  • API Docs
                                  About Moz
                                  • About
                                  • Team
                                  • Careers
                                  • Contact
                                  Why Moz
                                  • Case Studies
                                  • Testimonials
                                  Get Involved
                                  • Become an Affiliate
                                  • MozCon
                                  • Webinars
                                  • Practical Marketer Series
                                  • MozPod
                                  Connect with us

                                  Contact the Help team

                                  Join our newsletter
                                  Moz logo
                                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                                  • Accessibility
                                  • Terms of Use
                                  • Privacy

                                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.