Removing United Kingdom next to a generic TLD
-
We have a generic top level domain (gTLD) called www.xyz.com which was set to target United Kingdom in Google Webmaster Tools. We have now launched a US version of the site targeting US consumers – www.xyz.com/us and set the geographic target to United States on GWT.
When I search for xyz on www.google.com, the serps brings up the .com site with “United Kingdom” beside it. This will most likely confuse our prospects as they would think we only have a UK operation. How can I tell Google not to include “United Kindgom” next to www.xyz.com
Any thoughts?
Since this was happening, I removed the geographic location target for www.xyz.com to null on GWT. Would that help solve the issue?
Look forward to your reply. Many Thanks
Jay
-
Hi Jay,
if it is possible, it would be of great help if you could tell us the domain name of the site, because without giving a look to its code is quite hard to find an answer.
The same is valid for you, Yellabird. In your case, then, I would really suggest you to open a new question thread in the Q&A, in order to not mix both cases, even though they apparently are very similar.
Thanks
-
I have a client with the exact same problem. They are using a .com and only do business in the US. They've never done business internationally, yet "United Kingdom" shows up next to their domain in SERPS just like this:
Title Tags | More Title Tags
www.companyx.com - <cite>United Kingdom</cite>
Meta Description..................................................................
What is causing this?
-
Hi John,
Many Thanks for the comments. Really appreciate it. The content on both the sites is unique so we don't need to really worry about duplicate issues. But the links you pointed out are of great help.
So when I search for xyz on www.google.com, the results page shows the www.xyz.com and next to that it mentions United Kingdom. I wanted to know how we can get rid of the United Kingdom.
Thanks for your help
Jay
-
Removing the geotargeting for www.xyz.com sounds like a good first step. I'd watch like a hawk though to see if you see any loss of impressions or rank on google.co.uk searches. When you say that "United Kingdom" appears next to it in the SERPs, where does that display?
How much duplicate content is there between the UK and US versions of your site? If you have duplicate content, Google recently announced support for rel=alternate tags: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/12/new-markup-for-multilingual-content.html. This can be used to help have only one version of each page appear in a SERP. What you'd do it select a canonical version of the page across duplicate (or near duplicate) versions, and then set the alternate pages. Google will show the canonical versions title and description in the SERPs, but will show the country specific display URL based on the users geolocation. I'm still working on getting these up and running on my site.
Also, for Bing and other search engines, you might want to take a look at http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2011/03/01/how-to-tell-bing-your-website-s-country-and-language.aspx. This gives instructions for how to tell bots which language and country each page is specific to.
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
-
Which would Google prefer In my case? Country Specific TLD or SubFolders?
I'm looking for some expert advice regarding multilingual SEO domain selection. I have a basic question that I'd love some help clarifying. I'd love to know what you do if you were in my position..From the research I've done so far, although there are other options, the two best suites ways of us separating 2 languages within our site is: **Country specific TLD's. (.com & .fr) ** SubDomain Folders (.com & .com/fr) Would google prefer the power of the country specific domains & the cleanliness of the separation (Option 1)? Or would it value more the link authority sent to one main domain with languages separated by subdomains (Option 2)? **Question background details:**I am developing a website in French & English. The main target markets language at present is French.In the future however I'm sure equal if not more website users will use the English language.1) Languages on two separate TLD's (Top level Domains) for each country (.fr & .com). We already own both domains We use WPML on wordpress so it's easy to update both languages. Languages in sub folder .com (en) .com/fr (fr) Through link building, all 'link juice' will be directed to .com (across french & English). We want all our customers to land on .com/fr if they are in French speaking country.
International SEO | | FullSteamBusiness2 -
Google does not index UK version of our site, and serves US version instead. Do I need to remove hreflanguage for US?
Webmaster tools indicates that only 25% of pages on our UK domain with GBP prices is indexed.
International SEO | | lcourse
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?0 -
Google is still indexing with https,i removed ssl for my website
My website is claydip.com. I removed ssl for my website, but when i type claydip in google search it is still displaying with https and saying no description available..i lost visitors from search..kindly help me. I moved from bluehost to deamhost. I had a ssl at bluehost, when i move to dreamhost i am not using it.
International SEO | | knextweb8190 -
Freelancer.com: Same Content on Different TLD?
Take a look at freelancer.com and freelancer.in. Both have the same content. I check for rel=canonical and freelancer.in has one to itself. Not to the .com version. Both the sites are indexed in Google as well. Do you think high authority sites like freelancer can get away with duplicate content?
International SEO | | jombay0 -
Anyone have experience using .asia TLD?
We are the top US supplier of a very high end French made product. The largest market for their products is Japan. We would like to target Japanese buyers that travel (for business or pleasure) to the West Coast (we're in SF) for personalized US delivery. I have been reading all related SEOmoz posts for International SEO. But looking to the future there could be other Asian opportunities, so a .asia domain has appeal (as does the $6 per year cost vs. $99 for a .jp). Is this TLD credible (both to potential customers and Yahoo Japan)? THX
International SEO | | Chasmo1 -
.US VS .COM TLD Domains
Hi there! I have a spanish client who wants to enhance its online presence on the US. US is their most potential country. Its ok to create a .US website (and geolocalizate in GWT to the USA) and a .COM domain for the rest of ther word (without orientation) with the same content? Thank you so much. Jabi
International SEO | | overalia0 -
Risks of Migrating tld's to sub folders
Hi Guys, I am thinking of migrating our .co.nz and our .co.uk websites into sub folders on our .com website (eg: .com/uk and .com/nz). Do you think this is a risky strategy in regards to our performance in the localised search engines or should the centralisation of all these websites and their link authority into the .com help us move up the rankings? We are thinking of doing this in the next week, we have some really good rankings for the local googles, however we also have plenty of phrases sitting just on page 2 and I was hoping this might help boost them onto page 1? Has anyone else had experience migrating tld sites to sub folders on a .com and if so what was your experience of the impact on search rankings in the local googles and the timeframe that these changes took to have an effect? Did you have any negative results?
International SEO | | ConradC0 -
Multi-lingual SEO: Country-specific TLD's, or migration to a huge .com site?
Dear SEOmoz team, I’m an in-house SEO looking after a number of sites in a competitive vertical. Right now we have our core example.com site translated into over thirty different languages, with each one sitting on its own country-specific TLD (so example.de, example.jp, example.es, example.co.kr etc…). Though we’re using a template system so that changes to the .com domain propagate across all languages, over the years things have become more complex in quite a few areas. For example, the level of analytics script hacks and filters we have created in order to channel users through to each language profile is now bordering on the epic. For a number of reasons we’ve recently been discussing the cost/benefit of migrating all of these languages into the single example.com domain. On first look this would appear to simplify things greatly; however I’m nervous about what effect this would have on our organic SE traffic. All these separate sites have cumulatively received years of on/off-site work, and even if we went through the process of setting up page-for-page redirects to their new home on example.com, I would hate to lose all this hard-work (and business) if we saw our rankings tank as a result of the move. So I guess the question is, for an international business such as ours, which is the optimal site structure in the eyes of the search engines; Local sites on local TLD’s, or one mammoth site with language identifiers in the URL path (or subdomains)? Is Google still so reliant on TLD for geo targeting search results, or is it less of a factor in today’s search engine environment? Cheers!
International SEO | | linklater0