Problems with Google results
-
Hi Everybody,
I ve been dealing with this issue for a while now. i have a multilingual website: www.vallnord.com
When a search for Vallnord in Google it always shows the result in Catalan, but it does not show what I specified in the meta description, it displays what it crawls from the home page.
I have 2 problems here:
-
It is not showing my meta description. What can I do?
-
It is not showing the language from which the search was made. Example: if you search from Google.com and your default language is english it should been displayed the result from the english HTML. www.vallnord.com/en but it is not like this. It is always the catalan (default language of the site) the one that is displayed.
I have tried several things already:
-
Inserting the Hreflang function
-
Changing the descriptions
-
Resubmitting the sitemap via Google Webmaster
I can not figure out what is going on because if you search: "Vallnord Castellano" it will display the spanish URL but still not the proper description.
Moreover if you search: "www.vallnord.com/es" on google , it will display the proper URL and description.
FYI, I am using 301 redirects for the languages: es.vallnord.com it is the sames as www.vallnord.com/es
In addition to this, If using Yahoo search engine there is no problem. it will show the proper language. from yahoo.com the first result is in english and from yahoo.es the first result Spanish.
So any idea what would be the problem?And furthermore, any Idea which would be the solution?
Thanks in advance,
Guido.
-
-
Mmm...
if I search "Vallnord" in Google.com, I see as first result http://www.vallnord.com/en and the description snippet is actually its meta description tag.
As second result I've the .com (the catalan version). In this case the meta description is generated by Google itself as the original one is everything but a description:
<meta name="<a class="attribute-value">description</a>" content="<a class="attribute-value">Arcalís | Arinsal | Pal. Andorra</a>" />
In the case of the spanish version, it doesn't appear in the google.es SERPs when I search both for Vallnord and Vallnord castellano. You have to click on "more results from Vallnord to see it.
In this case, I suppose it is due to the fact the catalan is a language that you cannot geotarget as you can do with spanish or english, for instance (I'm not going to enter in "nationalism" issues :D).
That means that it appears in any Googles, also the spanish one. And having the .com a stronger link profile than the spanish one, it appears in the spanish SERPs.
The reason why your meta description doesn't appear when you do a search for "Vallnord" is quite simple, imho: the word Vallnord it's not present at all in the meta description, therefore Google compose the snippet assembling phrases of your home page where Vallnord is present.
-
Hi Gianluca,
Thanks for your email.
Yannick answer did not solve my problem. Do you have any better solution? How can I tell Google to read my description?
Does this take a lot of time? or should it be changed immediately?
Thanks,
Guido.
-
Hola Guide, did the Yannick answers helped you solving the issue, especially the 2nd one? I say so, because I still see Google choosing to show a description other than yours in the SERPs. A description which is taken directly from the home page content (surely because it thinks it better respond to the queries done by the users).
-
Ah yes, didnt see the meta langauge tag. Sorry about that. Try the links approach. Takes more time, but works.
Your meta description is very short. Try to get close to (but not more then) 160 - 165 chars and see what happens.
-
Hi Yannick,
Thanks for your answer.
-
My descriptions are about skiing, so the content is relevant on one hand. In the other hand it is not showing DMOZ description. So i do not understand why google is not respecting my meta description.
-
I need to tell Google all the different languages urls have the same content. that is what I was trying to do with the hreflang. but it did not work.
That tag is already inserted
regard,
G.
-
-
1. Their might be a mismatch between what is in your meta description and what content there is on your site. If you talk about french fries in your description, but it's not in the content of your site. Google will more often choose a snippoet from your site. Second thing that could happen is that if you are listed in DMOZ, Google sometimes takes the description given there, to be your desciption in the search engines.
2. Try
<meta http-equiv="language" content="EN">
But number 2 is not so easy. If you get a lot of links to your homepage, google will just decide that the .com url is more relevant to users than the /en/ version when ppl search for vallnord. So getting more link with Vallnord as <a>to the /en/ version might help with that problem.</a>
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
-
Rel canonical on other page instead of duplicate page. How Google responds?
Hi all, We have 3 pages for same topics. We decided to use rel canonical and remove old pages from search to avoid duplicate content. Out of these 3 pages....1 and 2 type of pages have more similar content where 3 type don't have. Generally we must use rel canonical between 1 and 2. But I am wondering what happens if I canonical between 1 and 3 while 2 has more similar content? Will Google respects it or penalise as we left the most similar page and used other page for canonical. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
We recently transitioned a site to our server, but Google is still showing the old server's urls. Is there a way to stop Google from showing urls?
We recently transitioned a site to our server, but Google is still showing the old server's urls. Is there a way to stop Google from showing urls?
Algorithm Updates | | Stamats0 -
Same search term shows #1 on Bing but #140 on Google?
Hi, I am using the search term of my website domain i.e. "Series Digital" on both Bing and Google. Bing shows my website as the top most link. But on Google, my website appears on page 14!! Why is this happening when I am using the string within the " "?
Algorithm Updates | | Cloudguru990 -
Site not in Google top 50 for key terms
Dear Moz Community, Our site - http://www.sportsdirectnews.com publishes a high volume of daily sport stories and aims to follow Google's Webmaster Guidelines, yet our pages don't appear anywhere in Google's SERP's. We've looked in details at the issue and think it could be something to do with: a) Unusual links or b) High page loading time or c) Too many on-page links If you could have a look at the site - http://www.sportsdirectnews.com - and give your professional opinion as to why our website is not appearing in SERP's, we would be most appreciative. SDN
Algorithm Updates | | BoomDialogue690 -
Website dance on Google Map results and organic seo results
My website is daily showing different position on maps.google.com and for the last few days like yesterday it was on 21st position on some keyword and today it is no where and same with other keywords. Is this a Google Dance ?? what can be its period ? and what is tyhe solution to handle it ??
Algorithm Updates | | mnkpso0 -
Did Google just give away how Penguin works?
At SMX during the You&A with Matt Cutts, Danny asked why the algo update was called Penguin. Matt said: "We thought the codename actually might give too much info about how it works so the lead engineer got to choose." Last night Google released their 39 updates for the month of May. Among them was this: "Improvements to Penguin. [launch codename "twref2", project codename "Page Quality"] This month we rolled out a couple minor tweaks to improve signals and refresh the data used by the penguin algorithm." Whoa, codename twref2 for Penguin improvement? Is this giving us an insight about how it works? I would guess the ref2 means second refresh perhaps. But tw I am not sure about. What do you think? Is there a hidden insight here?
Algorithm Updates | | DanDeceuster1 -
Why won't my keyword search results appear on google's top 50?
They are only appearing on Bing and Yahoo, can anyone share some insight?Help? Here is the URL: www.aaexs.com
Algorithm Updates | | RealmindTechnology0 -
Google +1 link on Domain or Page?
Since its release, I've seen Google +1 being used across an entire domain but only reference the root href in the code snippet. At the same time, you see other sites use +1 more naturally with the button being specific to the page you're on. What's your take on this? To clarfiy, do you add: or .. on each page.
Algorithm Updates | | noeltock0