Should I establish a Webmaster Tools site per language?
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Our company services multiple regions. Our website is setup for France, International (en-gb), Spanish, United States and China. The websites share a common template and format and menu tree but each has unique content.
Should I use a single Google Webmaster Tools site for all of these or establish each of them as a unique website?
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In theory - yes, but here is how look in practicle:
http://www.stateofdigital.com/google-broken/
Just check examples with "bandwagon" or "carro". I'm not sure how this happen but i can often see similar results since our Bulgarian language is close to Russian. So in bulgarian SERP i can see sometimes russian results. Of course result is relevant, just different country.I also have site related to Greek language. But this site can be visited from Cyprus and other worldwide locations due keywords. I can attach SearchConsole and Analytics screenshots if you don't believe it.
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What is currently taking place is that in the US I am competing with my international english website for top spot and the international english website often wins. I was hoping that I could assign international targetting to each and that the effort would help Google point users to the most relavent content but according to https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en:
"This setting is only for geographic data. If you're targeting users in different locations—for example, if you have a site in French that you want users in France, Canada, and Mali to read—don't use this tool to set France as a geographic target. A good example of where it would be useful is for a restaurant website: if the restaurant is in Canada, it's probably not of interest to folks in France. But if your content is in French and is of interest to people in multiple countries/regions, it's probably better not to restrict it."
So, to answer my previous question it looks like this will often lock the results into the country.
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I'm not sure because Canadian Quebec users for example can see .fr results in their SERP. Same can happen with Latin/South America and .es results. Just because language...
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Thank you for your answer. In our case the following applies:
"If your website is using different folders with gTLDS (example.com/de;example.com/es;example.com/fr) - yes you can verify them and setup to specific geo-location."
For now, we won't be implementing HREFLANG tags but I am considering assigning each website in Webmaster Tools an International Targeting setting. If I assign this value, for example the french website to France, I shouldn't necessarily see the French website show up less in, let's say, Canadian French searches, correct?
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- If your website is is using different ccTLD (.de/.es/.fr) domains - yes you can verify them and set to specific geo-location.
- If your website is using different gTLDS subdomains (de.example.com/es.example.com/fr.example.com) - yes you can verify them and setup to specific geo-location.
- If your website is using different folders with gTLDS (example.com/de;example.com/es;example.com/fr) - yes you can verify them and setup to specific geo-location.
- If your website is using url parameters (example.com/?hl=de;example.com/?hl=es;example.com/?hl=fr) - no you can verify them only once and setup to only one geo-location.
Whatever your structure is - please use hreflang to avoid duplicate content and provide even better experience for users and bots:
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