International Confusion between .com and .com/us
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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!!
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Have you confirmed that Googlebot is being redirected as well and it's for sure a 301 redirect?
If the redirects are IP based, it's possible Google figured out that there is an IP redirect (which is NOT recommended) and therefore, for a brand search, are giving the main domain with the US content - which is all they can see with an IP based redirect.
For your third question:
- Stop the redirect. Use a JS prompt to ask people to set a location preference and set a cookie based on that.
- Use sitemaps to push all country content to the SEs.
- Think about a responsive site rather than an m.domain.com - but if you must have that, make sure to make a separate sitemap for that and claim it in Webmaster Tools.
- Ensure that your mobile content is marked up correctly and if needed, the right canonicals are in place.
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Googlebot does not like to be redirected.
Please check your language settings:
https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag
https://moz.com/learn/seo/international-seo
https://moz.com/community/q/can-multiple-hreflang-tags-point-to-one-url-international-seo-question
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