Google not returning an international version of the page
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I run a website that duplicates some content across international editions. These are differentiated by the country codes e.g.
/uk/folder/article1//au/folder/article1/
The UK version is considered the origin of the content. We currently use hreflang to differentiate content, however there is no actual regional or language variation between the content on these pages.
Recently the UK version of a specific article is being indexed by Google as I am able to access via keyword search, however when I try to search for it via:
site:domain.com/uk/folder/article1/then it is not displaying, however the AU version is. Identical articles in the same folder are not having this issue.There are no errors within webmaster tools and I have recently refetched the specific URL. Additionally when checking for internal links to the UK and AU edition of the article, I am getting internal links for the AU edition of the article however no internal links for the UK edition of the article.
The main reason why this is problematic is because the article is now no longer appearing on the UK edition of the site for internal site search.
How can I find out why Google is not getting a result when the URL is entered but it is coming up when doing a specific search?
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Let me get this right before I start answering.
You have one article having an issue (just one) that is AU and UK, has hreflang implemented, is indexed for keyword searches but not showing for site: searches in Google. Few questions.
- Have you geo-targeted the subfolders for AU and UK?
- What version of Google are you using to check indexation?
- When you say you checked internal links for both, how did you do that?
- Your own site search (searching on your own site) does not return the UK article? Or do you mean that the site: search is not bringing up the UK article?
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