Prevent us.domainname ranking for UK searches
-
Hi Moz Community,
I'd appreciate any advice you can offer on this. We have a client with international offices, and we manage the website and SEO for some of these offices, including UK. Others, such as their US office, are managed by another agency.
All websites have the same domain name, but differ in their sub domains depending on their targeted country, e.g. uk.domainname for UK, us.domainname for US. All are .com.
The US office's agency re-desgined their us.domainname website earlier this year. We noticed a couple of months ago that the US website started to outrank the uk.domainname website for branded searches on Google from the UK.
After some investigation, we found that their agency had incorrectly implemented hreflang tags and set the us sub-domain as the hreflang="x-default" instead of www.domainname. They corrected this and uk.domainname is now the first organic result on Google. However, us.domainname has remained in 2nd place for organic brand searches (from Google UK) for the past two months, when we were hoping that this would have dropped out of the rankings by now.
We have asked the US office to ensure that their International Targeting is set to United States in Google Search Console, but have no way of knowing if this has actually been done.
Does anyone have experience of this? Is there anything else we could try to stop the US site ranking for Google UK, or is it just a matter of waiting?
Many thanks,
James
-
Best of luck James and please feel free to reach out to me if you need any further help - I tend to live on Twitter as well.
-Andy
-
Thanks very much for your advice, Andy. Very good point about brand searches!
Yes we've fetched as Google again and the tags seem to be working fine. We'll just have to be patient in this case.
-
Hi James,
A brand search is likely to throw up international pages as it is very different from a search term - this is much more specific and handled differently because you are using sub-domains rather than a folder structure. This is (almost) another separate entity in Google's eyes.
It is possible that over time Google will address this, but I am not sure there is anything more than you have already done that will make more differences.
Have you done a new fetch as Google? Are you sure HREFLANG is all working correctly? You can use this to test it.
-Andy
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
-
Google Analytics Search Console for International Countries
Hi Moz Community, Our e-commerce site is trying to gauge the opportunity of certain queries for specific countries. I'm trying to use the search console data presented in GA to do this. I'm looking at the top queries filtered by each country and also the top landing pages for each country as well. The non filtered data for queries and landing pages is completely different than by country and some if it looks wrong. For instance, our most popular query by impressions shows 0 query impressions in the US once filtered by country. Our site is based in the US so this doesn't make any sense, the same is true for landing pages. Is the queries and landing page data in GA under search console a combination of all countries? Since our target is set to the USA in search console is this data technically US based? How is this data so off? Thanks for answering!
International SEO | | znotes0 -
International Confusion between .com and .com/us
A question regarding International SEO: We are seeing cases for many sites that meet these criteria: -International sites that have www.example.com/ ip redirecting to country site based on ip redirect (ex. www.example.com/ 301 to www.example.com/us -There is a desktop + mobile site (www.example.com + m.example.com) The issue we see is Google shows www.example.com/ in US search results instead of www.example.com/us in search results. Since the .com/ redirects, there is no mobile version, and www.example.com/ also shows up in mobile SERPs instead of m.example.com/us. My questions are: 1. If www.example.com/ is redirecting users and Googlebot, why is Googlebot caching it with the content of www.example.com/us? 2. Why is www.example.com/ showing up in SERPs instead of www.example.com/us? 3. How can we help Google display www.example.com/us and m.example.com/us in SERPs instead of www.example.com/? Thanks!!
International SEO | | FranFerrara0 -
Mini Google Search box within organic sitelinks
I'm trying to find solid information on Google's criteria on showing a "mini Google search box" within sitelinks? Example: if you type-in "wikipedia" on Google.com, a mini search box appears within the site links. This is for organic listing not paid listing. The Google Support page on Sitelinks does not state any info on the mini google search box. http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=47334
International SEO | | Mobies0 -
.com AND .co.uk.
Many of the massive sites (like Amazon) are using both .com and .co.uk. For smaller sites, is this a good way to rank highly on Google.com and .co.uk? Is there a way to do this without duplicating content or diluting link juice?
International SEO | | ojwilliams80 -
Keyphrase ranking a geo-redirected site in Google
Hi all This is the situation. I have a client who runs a number of ccTLD sites (all exact match brand name domains), including a .com which they use for the US. This is a hair care product and due to Advertising Standards Authority (UK) restrictions, they cannot use a certain phrase to promote their products - 'hair loss' on the domain.co.uk site. However, in the US, there is no such restriction and can use wording this on the site. A brand name search in google.co.uk brings up .co.uk as 1st result and .com as 2nd result, so the .com is indexed in google.co.uk. Any non-US user visiting domain.com will be redirected to their ccTLD site. Here's my question - could I feasibly get the domain.com site ranking in google.co.uk for certain 'hair loss' based keyphrases, considering the fact that I can mention it in the copy on there but not on the domain.co.uk site. Would I need to remove any Geographic Target in the WMT account for domain.com? Or is this a form of Google cloaking and could see the site penalised? Thanks
International SEO | | Coolpink0 -
Analytics Profile for '.co.uk' extension
What's up Mozzers, I am currently doing some work for a local business in the UK and they've asked me to set-up Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools profiles for them. The site is currently accessible at the following domain extension, 'mydomain.com' and 'mydomain.co.uk'. What is the best way to set this up in Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools so I get the most accurate measurement of traffic coming to my website?
International SEO | | NiallSmith0 -
New web design targeting UK & France
Hi I have a couple of topics I would like to clarify. My existing website is on .ie & we are now expanding into France & UK We have decided to take the route of example.com with subfolders for example.com/ie example.com/uk & example.com/fr just like thishttp://app.wistia.com/stats/278112 provided by SEOmoz Should we 301 redirect our existing .ie site to the .com or the .com/ie? When building links should links be built to .com or each .com .com/fr etc Also are there any good resources out there about International SEO? Thank you 🙂
International SEO | | Socialdude1 -
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-Marketing2