Google cache is showing my UK homepage site instead of the US homepage and ranking the UK site in US
-
Hi There,
When I check the cache of the US website (www.us.allsaints.com) Google returns the UK website. This is also reflected in the US Google Search Results when the UK site ranks for our brand name instead of the US site. The homepage has hreflang tags only on the homepage and the domains have been pointed correctly to the right territories via Google Webmaster Console.This has happened before in 26th July 2015 and was wondering if any had any idea why this is happening or if any one has experienced the same issueFDGjldR
-
Hi,
I thought I would let people know that since we updated the href langs to the below format we are still yet to see the US homepage become visible in Google US and the UK homepage is still ranking
-
Hi Kate,
Thanks for your response I will amend the href lang area as follows:
Just for some background information we originally only had:
Having the above format we still occurred the homepage issue however maybe the removal of will help clear the issue.
Thanks for the feedback, we'll get this live asap and I'll resubmit the the homepages. Another contributing factor is that we do not have href lang site wide.
-
Alright, so this is going to be a long and involved answer.
You are geo-targeting the root domain to the UK, but you also have it double tagged in HREFLANG. One is general English (root domain) and other GB English to the same place. Then you have an x-default pointing to the same place.
Google officially thinks that www.allsaints.com is a general English landing page and are probably ignoring the UK geo-targeting. Due to that, the fact that your root domain homepage is stronger than any other version, and because the content is basically the same, it's seeing what you see as your UK homepage as the root domain homepage without any targeting.
In short, you are sending mixed signals and need to sort that out. This might not all make sense but right now you need to:
- Remove the "en" hreflang tag since you have english variations.
- Remove the x-default hreflang tag since that page is not a place for anyone to land and choose a location/language. (ex. fedex.com)
Doing those two things might help clear up some of the confusion, but I also think you have the wrong international technical strategy. That's a whole other thing. Please DM me if you would like to talk about that, but the above should solve your posted problem.
-
I would attempt to get the US site reindexed by whatever means necessary and then check it.
First, I would add unique content to the US page and fetch again. Also make sure the homepage is in the sitemap - I'm not sure it is.
If you can get the US homepage reindexed, cache should work but I think in this case the cache issue is much smaller. The main issue is that your US homepage has been completely deindexed.
-
Matt,
Thank you for taking the time out to look at this, I very much appreciate that. We have not requested any URL removals for the last six months looking within Google Webmaster Console.
There are no manual spam actions for the site and we checked the https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/change-address?hl=en&siteUrl=www.us.allsaints.com and that hasn't been touched either.
In terms of actions last Friday we changed the meta data for the US, UK, CA, IE domains so they are unique. We also changed the image filenames and alt text as well as some of the copy on the page. After that was done the homepages were submitted to Google index using fetch. I was hoping that those changes would have helped the US appear to be different.
Our other international domain FR, DE, ES, IT are not suffering which lead me to thinking this is a duplicate issue or some how Google is getting confused.
-
Well ... I gave this as thorough a check as I possibly can. Guess what?
It's happening because your www.us.allsaints.com homepage is NOT INDEXED.
- site:fr.allsaints.com (1st result)
- site:es.allsaints.com (1st result)
- site:www.allsaints.com (1st result)
site:www.us.allsaints.com - Nope. You have subpages indexed but not the homepage.
Now, whether that's duplicate content or the massive amount of IP-related spam links to the site is hard to say. But your homepage has been deindexed and because it's not indexed, doesn't show up in the cache.
If you have the site claimed in Search Console, check for penalties. Check that you haven't removed the URL through Google Index > Remove URLs. Check that you haven't done a site move on https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/change-address?hl=en&siteUrl=www.us.allsaints.com
Once the homepage gets indexed, you should be good to go.
-
Hi Matt,
The first red box highlights I am trying to find the cache from www.us.allsaints.com. The second box shows that Google is returning the UK site which is www.allsaints.com and the third box shows our pop up. The pop up is executed when a customer comes online to a one of our sites and we suggest there is a local version which is better for them e.g. If you are from Germany and come to the UK site the pop will come up suggesting going to the Germany site.
In terms of the x-default page would the override the EN-US hreg lang?
-
Hi Kate,
Yes we are geo targeting www.allsaints.com to the UK
I am based in the UK
I used a US proxy using Incognito
Thank you for getting in touch any help would be appreciated
-
The image you posted a link to doesn't say UK anywhere I can see? Google is returning the x-default from your hreflang tags.
Also, from here I see your .com in both the cache and the SERPs. You don't have an Australia language setting so it seems to be working right.
I'm not sure where you're seeing the issue, though. You have three things highlighted in that pic and they are right, right?
-
You're sending a few mixed signals via hreflang. I need to ask a few questions.
- Are you geotargeting www.allsaints.com to the UK?
- Where are you located?
- How did you do the search attached? From what country? Incognito?
-
Moz had a similar caching issue one week ago (/ugc/ content cached instead of /blog/ pages). They posted this question on Webmaster forum - may be the answers can help you find a solution (there was an answer from John Mu as well).
Dirk
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
-
When doing a site search my homepage comes up second. Does that matter?
When I do a site: search the homepage comes up second. Does this matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | EcommerceSite0 -
Why is my site not ranked?
Hey, does enybody have an idea, why my site www.detox.si is not ranked for the KW detox in www.google.si (Slovenia). It is being indexed, but it does not rank and i have no idea why. Best, M.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Spletnafuzija0 -
Google Crawl Rate and Cached version - not updated yet :(
Hi, Ive noticed that Google is not recognizing/crawling the latest changes on pages in my site - last update when viewing Cached version in Google Results is over 2 months ago. So, do I Fetch as Googlebot to force an update? Or do I remove the page's cached version in GWT remove urls? Thanks, B
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bjs20100 -
Help - .ie vs .co.uk in google uk
We have a website that for years has attracted a high level of organic searches and had a very high level of links. It has the .ie extension (Ireland) and did very well when competing in the niche market it is in on google.co.uk. We have the same domain name but in .co.uk format and basically redirected traffic to it when people typed in .co.uk instead. Since the latest panda update, we have noticed that the number of visits organically has dropped to a quarter of what it was and this is continuing to go down. We have also noticed that the .ie version is no longer listed in google and has been replaced by .co.uk. As we've never exchanged or submitted links for the .co.uk domain this means there are only links indexed in google. Is there any way I can get google to re-index the site using the .ie domain rather than the .co.uk domain? I am hemorrhaging sales now and becoming a much more withdrawn person by the day!!! PS - the .co.uk domain is set up as a domain alias in plesk with both .ie and .co.uk domain dns pointing to the the same IP address. Kind Regards
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rufo
Steve0 -
Hi my site dropped from page rank 4 to 0,
I have done everything the correct way and my site shouldnt break any guidelines can someone tell me where i can contact google and oppose this please? also can someone tell me if links play a part in this> of if this is something to do with the penguin update and my site has been wrongly effected? my url is below http://www.diamondwaste.co.uk/
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tommyboy70 -
Our site has been up almost 2 months and no rankings yet?
Our site is www.AkinsSeptic.com. We spent a lot of time on the site and have not received any rankings yet. Can you advise as to what we can do to get this site ranked at all. I know it needs a lot of SEO work and some links, however, it should rank mildly due to the low competition of keywords we are using. Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Tormz0 -
Google.ca vs Google.com Ranking
I have a site I would like to rank high for particular keywords in the Google.ca searches and don't particularly care about the Google.com searches (it's a Canadian service). I have logged into Google Webmaster Tools and targeted Canada. Currently my site is ranking on the third page for my desired keywords on Google.com, but is on the 20th page for Google.ca. Previously this change happened quite quickly -- within 4 weeks -- but it doesn't seem to be taking here (12 weeks out and counting). My optimization seems to be fine since I'm ranking well on Google.com: not sure why it's not translating to Google.ca. Any help or thoughts would be appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seorm0