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 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
-
Home Page Disappears From Google - But Rest of Site Still Ranked
As title suggests we are running into a serious issue of the home page disapearing from Google search results whilst the rest of the site still remains. We search for it naturally cannot find a trace, then use a "site:" command in Google and still the home page does not come up. We go into web masters and inspect the home page and even Google states that the page is indexable. We then run the "Request Indexing" and the site comes back on Google. This is having a damaging affect and we would like to understand why this issue is happening. Please note this is not happening on just one of our sites but has happened to three which are all located on the same server. One of our brand which has the issue is: www.henweekends.co.uk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JH_OffLimits0 -
Breaking up a site into multiple sites
Hi, I am working on plan to divide up mid-number DA website into multiple sites. So the current site's content will be divided up among these new sites. We can't share anything going forward because each site will be independent. The current homepage will change to just link out to the new sites and have minimal content. I am thinking the websites will take a hit in rankings but I don't know how much and how long the drop will last. I know if you redirect an entire domain to a new domain the impact is negligible but in this case I'm only redirecting parts of a site to a new domain. Say we rank #1 for "blue widget" on the current site. That page is going to be redirected to new site and new domain. How much of a drop can we expect? How hard will it be to rank for other new keywords say "purple widget" that we don't have now? How much link juice can i expect to pass from current website to new websites? Thank you in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | timdavis0 -
Cached version of my site is not showing content?
Hi mozzers, I am a bit worried since I looked a cache version of my site and somehow content is partially showing up and navigation has completely disappeared. Where could this come from? What should I be doing? Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Taysir0 -
Google Flux in Rankings Or Something More Serious
Hi all, Two weeks ago i noticed that one of our pages which normally ranks in the top 5 of search results dropped out of the top 50 results. I checked to make sure there were no Google penalties and checked to make sure the page was crawlable. Everything seemed fine and after a few hours our page went back into the number one position. I assumed it was a Google Flux. This number one ranking lasted about a week, today I see my page has dropped out of the top 50 yet again and hasn't come back up. again there are no penalties and there doesn't seem to be issues with the page. I'm hoping it comes back up to the top by tomorrow. What could be causing such a big dip multiple times?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | znotes0 -
Google Ignoring Canonical Tag for Hundreds of Sites
Bazaar Voice provides a pretty easy-to-use product review solution for websites (especially sites on Magento): https://www.magentocommerce.com/magento-connect/bazaarvoice-conversations-1.html If your product has over a certain number of reviews/questions, the plugin cuts off the number of reviews/questions that appear on the page. To see the reviews/questions that are cut off, you have to click the plugin's next or back function. The next/back buttons' URLs have a parameter of "bvstate....." I have noticed Google is indexing this "bvstate..." URL for hundreds of sites, even with the proper rel canonical tag in place. Here is an example with Microsoft: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:zcxT7MRHHREJ:www.microsoftstore.com/store/msusa/en_US/pdp/Surface-Book/productID.325716000%3Fbvstate%3Dpg:8/ct:r+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us My website is seeing hundreds of these "bvstate" urls being indexed even though we have a proper rel canonical tag in place. It seems that Google is ignoring the canonical tag. In Webmaster Console, the main source of my duplicate titles/metas in the HTML improvements section is the "bvstate" URLs. I don't necessarily want to block "bvstate" in the robots.txt as it will prohibit Google from seeing the reviews that were cutoff. Same response for prohibiting Google from crawling "bvstate" in Paramters section of Webmaster Console. Should I just keep my fingers crossed that Google honors the rel canonical tag? Home Depot is another site that has this same issue: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:k0MBLFcu2PoJ:www.homedepot.com/p/DUROCK-Next-Gen-1-2-in-x-3-ft-x-5-ft-Cement-Board-172965/202263276%23!bvstate%3Dct:r/pg:2/st:p/id:202263276+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | redgatst1 -
Wrong country sites being shown in google
Hi, I am having some issues with country targeting of our sites. Just to give a brief background of our setup and web domains We use magento and have 7 connected ecommerce sites on that magento installation 1.www.tidy-books.co.uk (UK) - main site 2. www.tidy-books.com (US) - variations in copy but basically a duplicate of UK 3.www.tidy-books.it (Italy) - fully translated by a native speaker - its' own country based social medias and content regularly updated/created 4.www.tidy-books.fr (France) - fully translated by a native speaker - its' own country based social medias and content regularly updated/created 5.www.tidy-books.de (Germany) - fully translated by a native speaker - uits' own country based social medias and content regularly updated/created 6.www.tidy-books.com.au (Australia) - duplicate of UK 7.www.tidy-books.eu (rest of Europe) - duplicate of UK I’ve added the country and language href tags to all sites. We use cross domain canonical URLS I’ve targeted in the international targeting in Google webmaster the correct country where appropriate So we are getting number issues which are driving me crazy trying to work out why The major one is for example If you search with an Italian IP in google.it for our brand name Tidy Books the .com site is shown first then .co.uk and then all other sites followed on page 3 the correct site www.tidy-books.it The Italian site is most extreme example but the French and German site still appear below the .com site. This surely shouldn’t be the case? Again this problem happens with the co.uk and .com sites with when searching google.co.uk for our keywords the .com often comes up before the .co.uk so it seems we have are sites competing against each other which again can’t be right or good. The next problem lies in the errors we are getting on google webmaster on all sites is having no return tags in the international targeting section. Any advice or help would be very much appreciated. I’ve added some screen shots to help illustrate and happy to provide extra details. Thanks UK%20hreflang%20errors.png de%20search.png fr%20search.png it%20search.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | tidybooks1 -
Will changing Google Places address hurt rankings?
I have a client transferring ownership of their service business (photo booth rental). The current listed address will change, so my main concern is preserving the rankings during the transition. Should I change the Google Local listing to a new physical address, or change it to "serve a surrounding area"? It seems best to set as "serving a surrounding area", but I know Google is really weird about making local listing changes. I've seen and heard about countless listings falling completely off the map after being updated. Any advice appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Joes_Ideas0 -
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