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!!
-
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.
-
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
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
-
Question regarding international SEO
Hi there, I have a question regarding international SEO and the APAC region in particular. We currently have a website extension .com and offer our content in English. However, we notice that our website hardly ranks in Google in the APAC region, while one of the main languages in that region is also English. I figure one way would be to set up .com/sg/ (or .com/au/ or .com/nz/), but then the content would still be in English. So wouldn't that be counted as duplicate content? Does anyone have experience in improving website rankings for various English-speaking countries, without creating duplicate content? Thanks in advance for your help!
International SEO | | Billywig0 -
US site vs New Canadian site for Brand
Hi Everyone, My company decided to create a Canadian site for Canadian customers. How do I slowly transition the US site for ranking in Google.ca? I was thinking of using robots.txt to block Google.Ca from crawling the US site? Can anyone provide some advice oh how this should be managed? Thank you!
International SEO | | JMSCC0 -
Local Address for International Business?
Our client's business www.shanore.com is based in Ireland but targets international markets, particularly the USA. A few months ago we made the switch to HTTPS and ever since our organic traffic has steadily declined in the USA, UK, Canada etc. by roughly 30 - 40%. In Ireland, over the same period of time it's increased by around 30%. An Irish address features in the Footer and the same address is also given on Google + / Google My Business. Webmaster Tools is set to target the USA & the site is hosted in the USA. Could the presence of the Irish address somehow be overriding the Webmaster Tools geo-targeting? Why would traffic fall everywhere else apart from Ireland? Keyword rankings are also now stronger in Ireland than in other countries.
International SEO | | Johnny_AppleSeed0 -
If domain mapping subfolders to TLD's is it perceived as a fully separate entity/site therafter ?
Hi I take it once you have domain mapped a country specific subfolder to a country specific TLD (for better local region targeting reasons) Google perceives it as a completely separate entity and it no longer shares any of the parent sites domain benefits (such as domain authority etc) so from that point on requires its own dedicated link building etc ? All Best Dan
International SEO | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
For a website in portuguese what would you use? pt.domain.com, br.domain.com or domain.com.br
Hello We are a company with a website in several languages, one of them is portuguese. Our market is 2 times bigger in Brazil than in Portugal, but obviously Brazil has more potential in the future. In domain.com we have our main site in English. What would you use? pt.domain.com, br.domain.com or domain.com.br? In the first case, it means just portuguese, in the second Brazil but it is not geolocalized, and in the third, you are almost ignoring Portugal users... Duplicating content, doesn't seem to make sense... The content is basically international, so it is just the language that matters. Any help will be very much appreciated.
International SEO | | forex-websites0 -
Google US vs Google UK
I could have posted this somewhere else, but I cannot find it. So, I have keywords that rank well in Google US and many that do well in Google UK too. I thought all of my keywords ranking well in the US would also rank well the UK. I have figured out today that it is not the case. Why would I rank in the top 3 in the US and not even show up in the top 50 in the UK? It is very strange. Thanks for your help! I am not super new to SEO or web business. I have had a very good company that has been ranking well since 2004.
International SEO | | journeybeyondtravel0 -
Best URL for international domain
Hello SEomozers We have a site with this structure: -www.xyz.com US customers, limited content in12 languages, -global.xyz.com for International customers, full content in 12 languages. The global site is the hub for the rest of the world. We are creating a new site from scratch and want to consolidate the two domains in one by using subfolders, such as: www.xyz.com for USA, www.wyz.com/jp for US customers reading in japanese and www.xyz.com/int-jp for customers from Japan (international - will set geo location with webmastertool) What do you think would be the best naming convention for the international?
International SEO | | FXDD
www.xyz.com/int-jp or
www.xyz.com/eu-jp or
www.xyz.com/eu/jp or
www.xyz.com/ ...any other suggestions?0 -
International SEO - auto geo-targetting
I read with interest the recent post on international SEO and the top level domain architecture approaches to local content: http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/folders-vs-subdomains-vs-cctld-in-international-seo-an-overview#jtc135670 The issue I have is a little more complex: The business sells a wide variety of products (37) but one is by far and away the biggest and most popular. This means that due to the link profile of the various country sites and HQ site, search engines categorise the site according to this product (this is easily seen with the Google Adplanner) and the other product lines suffer as a result. The current architecture is to have a .com site and then individual ccTLD country sites, again with all products on each site. This creates an issue as in most countries the brand is not strong (compared to the keyword names and search volumes of the products) and so it is not that effective in generating organic traffic. The .com hogs much of the inbound links and the country sites themselves are not that well optimised for a number of reasons. A proposed solution has been to leverage the strength of the .com and the search volume for the product names, and to produce thematic sites based on each product: productA.brand.com
International SEO | | StevieCC
productB.brand.com
productC.brand.com In this way, the sites, content and link profiles are aligned around the more desirable products and we can expect improved organic search performance as a result (or at least ensure relevant traffic finds the relevant content fast). In terms of providing localised content, the plan was to use content mirroring and to then assign each content mirror to a specific geo-location using the webmaster tools console (and other SE equivilents). This is shown I think in one of Rand's videos. ProductA.brand.com/de/de Germany site for product A with unique German content
ProductA.brand.com/fr/fr French site for product A with unique French content This makes economic sense to me as to utilise the ccTLDs would result in hundreds of separate sites with all the licence and server considerations that entails. For example, for product A alone we would have to produce: productA.brand.de
productA.brand.fr
productA.brand.cn
productA.brand.jp
ect ect ect This just would not be sustainable in license/server costs alone across 37 products and 24 countries. However, I saw in a recent presentation at SES London that (auto) geo-targeting is risky, often doesn't work well for SEO and can even be seen as cloaking. I think the above strategy could still work, but perhaps we should avoid the use of auto-geotargetting altogether and hope the search engines alone do their job in getting users to the right content as we optimise the unique content for each country (and if they don't, ensure our desgn, UX and country selectors do the job instead). SEO guru consensus is to use the ccTLD if you own it, but as described above, in the real world that just isn't possible or practical given the company's strategic position. Which leads to the final question- we do own the brand ccTLDs- if they are directed back to the content mirror for the country on the .com, is there any SEO benefit in doing so aside from directing back any link juice associated with the domain)?0
