Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • SEO Q&A
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • Case Studies
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      What is your Brand Authority?
      Moz

      What is your Brand Authority?

      Check yours now
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • SEO Q&A

        Insights & discussions from an SEO community of 500,000+.

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • Case Studies

        Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. International SEO
    4. Google does not index UK version of our site, and serves US version instead. Do I need to remove hreflanguage for US?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    Google does not index UK version of our site, and serves US version instead. Do I need to remove hreflanguage for US?

    International SEO
    3
    15
    3559
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • lcourse
      lcourse last edited by

      Webmaster tools indicates that only 25% of pages on our UK domain with GBP prices is indexed.
      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?

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • lcourse
        lcourse @Christy-Correll last edited by

        Hi Christy, not yet.

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • Christy-Correll
          Christy-Correll Staff last edited by

          Hi there, have you been able to figure out this riddle yet -- or are you still working on it? We'd love an update!

          Christy 🙂

          lcourse 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • lcourse
            lcourse @VERBInteractive last edited by

            Thanks. Will post an update once we figured out this riddle.

            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • VERBInteractive
              VERBInteractive last edited by

              Worth a try, specifically since nothing else seems to be working at this point.

              Sorry I couldn't be more help. Please let us know what the solution is when ever you figure it out.

              lcourse 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • lcourse
                lcourse @VERBInteractive last edited by

                No.

                But in theroy it should not make a difference.
                hreflang can be either implemented in sitemap or in page.

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • VERBInteractive
                  VERBInteractive last edited by

                  Do your sitemaps indicate the varying languages. See: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en

                  https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/2620865?hl=en

                  lcourse 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • lcourse
                    lcourse @VERBInteractive last edited by

                    Thanks for checking. Yes, rich snippets are frequently not showing currently, however this is a different issue and it may be temporary.

                    My primary concern is rather that google does not index our sitemap for this domain according to search console and related that they show the .com page as cached version of the .uk page.

                    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • VERBInteractive
                      VERBInteractive last edited by

                      Very odd, when we do a search for "Adorini Firenze - Deluxe" in google UK with a VPN on for the UK it doesn't get any of the price schema markup. Maybe google is having a hard time deciding what to do with the schema so for normal results it doesn't pull any of the schema. What KW are ranking for this page? do you get similar results as us?

                      https://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=chrome-psyapi2&ion=1&ie=UTF-8&q=Adorini Firenze - Deluxe&oq=Adorini Firenze - Deluxe&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l3j69i60l2.943j0j7&rct=j

                      lcourse 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • lcourse
                        lcourse @VERBInteractive last edited by

                        Happens already for many months.

                        Good idea to test with VPN. I just gave it a try with a UK proxy  and same result.

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • VERBInteractive
                          VERBInteractive last edited by

                          odd, looks to pull the cached schema, the issue might correct itself with time.

                          It's a bit of a long shot, but have you tried the lang/country codes completely in lower case? I doubt that will fix it but the tool in this Moz article I found (https://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool) generates them in all lower case.

                          Also out of curiosity are you doing your test searches through a VPN?

                          https://moz.com/blog/using-the-correct-hreflang-tag-a-new-generator-tool

                          lcourse 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • lcourse
                            lcourse @VERBInteractive last edited by

                            Sure, click on cached version of the first result in the following google search. Also you see here the rich snippets in USD instead of GBP:

                            https://www.google.es/search?q=site%3Ahumidordiscount.co.uk&oq=site%3Ahumidordiscount.co.uk&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i58.6216j0j1&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8#q=site:humidordiscount.co.uk+firenze

                            1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                            • VERBInteractive
                              VERBInteractive last edited by

                              Well at least we checked off one thing that it is not. 🙂

                              Can you provide a link to the SERP where you are seeing the issue?

                              lcourse 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • lcourse
                                lcourse last edited by

                                everything looks fine  in google search console.

                                no hreflang errors, no sitemap errors and google crawls every day basically all our pages for many months already.

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                                • VERBInteractive
                                  VERBInteractive last edited by

                                  Odd, are you seeing any errors in Google Search Console (use to be Google webmaster tools) under Search Traffic/International Targeting. It will show any hreflang errors, I would start there and fix any errors.

                                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                                  • 1 / 1
                                  • First post
                                    Last post

                                  Got a burning SEO question?

                                  Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                                  Start my free trial


                                  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.

                                  • See all categories

                                  Related Questions

                                  • lcourse

                                    Baidu Webmaster Tools: How to setup in "Site Properties" the field "Affiliate subject"?

                                    baidu china baidu webmaster tools

                                    Hi ,
                                    finally I managed to setup my site in Baidu Webmaster Tools with the help of a freelance staff member in China. Site is verified and sitemap submitted. In section "Site Properties", field "Affiliate subject" I can't figure out after extensive search what I need to setup here for a foreign company without any presence and without company registration in China. Anybody can help? When I click on this field, it indicates "Site association subject is a necessary link for mobile resources to enter search." so my site will not show up in mobile results without it? Grateful for any tips on how to resolve this piece of puzzle of the baidu setup.
                                    Thanks

                                    International SEO | | lcourse
                                    0
                                  • Avid_Demand

                                    Using same URL for both "en" and "en-us" hreflang tags

                                    Hi,I have a question. Is it okay if I use the same URL for both "en" and "en-us" hreflang tags? For example, for my en-us page: Is this okay with Google? What are your thoughts on this?

                                    International SEO | | Avid_Demand
                                    0
                                  • Davide1984

                                    International SEO - Targeting US and UK markets

                                    Hi folks, i have a client who is based in italy and they set up a site that sells travel experiences in the sout of Italy (the site currently sit on a server in Italy). The site has been set up as gTLDs: www.example.com They only want to target the US and the UK market to promote their travel experiences and the site has only the english version (the site does not currently offer an italian version). If they decide to go for the gTLDs and not actually change to a ccTLDs (which would be ideal from my point of view) how are the steps to be taken to set this up correctly on GSC? They currently only have one property registered on GSC: www.exapmple.com therefore i guess the next steps are: Add new property - www.example.com/uk and and set up geo targeting for UK Existing property - www.example.com/ set up geo targeting for US In case the client does not have the budget to optimise the content for american and british languages, would still make sense to have 2 separate property in GSC (example.com for US market and example.com/uk for UK market)? Few considerations: Add canonical tag to avoid duplicate content across the two versions of the site (in the event there is no budget to optimise the content for US and UK market)? Thank you all in advance for looking into this David

                                    International SEO | | Davide1984
                                    0
                                  • romh

                                    Country subfolders showing as sitelinks in Google, country targeting for home page no longer working

                                    Hi There, Just wondering if you can help. Our site has 3 region versions (General .com, /ie/ for Ireland and /gb/ for UK), each submitted to Google Webmaster Tools as seperate sites with hreflang tags in the head section of all pages.  Google was showing the correct results for a few weeks, but I resubmitted the home pages with slight text changes last week and something strange happened, though it may have been coincidental timing. When we search for the brand name in google.ie or google.co.uk, the .com now shows as the main site, where the sitelinks still show the correct country versions.  However, the country subdirectories are now appearing as sitelinks, which is likely causing the problem.  I have demoted these on GWT, but unsure as to whether that will work and it seems to take a while for sitelink demotion to work. Has anyone had anything similar happen?  I thought perhaps it was a markup issue breaking the head section so that Google can no longer see the hreflangs pointing to each other as alternates.  I checked the source code in w3 validator and it doesn't show any errors.  Anyway, any help would be much appreciated - and thanks to anyone who gets back, it's a tricky type of issue to troubleshoot. Thanks, Ro

                                    International SEO | | romh
                                    0
                                  • mat-relevance

                                    Is there any reason to get a massive decrease on indexed pages?

                                    Hi, I'm helping on SEO for a big e-commerce in LatAm and one thing we've experienced during the last months is that our search traffic had reduced and the indexed pages had decreased in a terrible way. The site had over 2 Million indexed pages (which was way too much, since we believe that around 10k would be more than enough to hold the over 6K SKUs) but now this number has decreased to less than 3K in less than 2 months. I've also noticed that most of the results in which the site is still appearing are .pdf or .doc files but not actual content on the website. I've checked the following: Robots (there is no block, you can see that on the image as well) Webmaster Tools Penalties Duplicated content I don't know where else to look for. Can anyone help? Thanks in advance! cpLwX1X

                                    International SEO | | mat-relevance
                                    0
                                  • KevinDunne

                                    Best domain for spanish language site targeting ALL spanish territories?

                                    hi, we're have a strong .com domain and are looking to launch a site for spanish speakers (ie latin america + spain). we already have various subdirectories for some foreign language sites (eg. ourdomain.co.uk, us.ourdomain.com, ca.ourdomain.com, ourdomainchina.com, ourdomainindia.com etc) we already have a B2B site ourdomain.com-es which will remain the same. I'm thinking best practice would be to launch translated copy for the following: ourdomain.com/es ourdomain.com/cl ourdomain.com/mx ourdomain.com/pt etc etc firstly is this the best option? secondly, i'm really interested to hear whether there is a less time/resource intensive route that would give us visibility in ALL spanish speaking territories? Also - if we go with just one of the above (eg ourdomain.com/cl) how likely are we to get traction in other spanish speaking territories? any help much appreciated!

                                    International SEO | | KevinDunne
                                    0
                                  • Envoke-Marketing

                                    What countries does Google crawl from? Is it only US or do they crawl from Europe and Asia, etc.?

                                    Where does Google crawl the web from? Is it in the US only, or do they do it from a European base too? The reason for asking is for GeoIP redirection. For example, if a website is using GeoIP redirection to redirect all US traffic to a .com site and all EU traffic to a .co.uk site, will Google ever see the .co.uk site?

                                    International SEO | | Envoke-Marketing
                                    2
                                  • Francisco_Meza

                                    Google Webmaster Tools - International SEO Geo-Targeting site with Worldwide rankings

                                    I have a client who already has rankings in the US & internationally. The site is broken down like this: url.com (main site with USA & International Rankings) url.com/de url.com/de-english url.com/ng url.com/au url.com/ch url.com/ch-french url.com/etc Each folder has it's own sitmap & relative content for it's respective country. I am reading in google webmaster tools > site config > settings, the option under 'Learn More': "If you don't want your site associated with any location, select Unlisted." If I want to keep my client's international rankings the way it currently is on url.com, do NOT geo target to United States? So I select unlisted, right? Would I use geo targeting on the url.com/de, url.com/de-english, url.com/ng, url.com/au and so on?

                                    International SEO | | Francisco_Meza
                                    0

                                  Get started with Moz Pro!

                                  Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                                  Start my free trial
                                  Products
                                  • Moz Pro
                                  • Moz Local
                                  • Moz API
                                  • Moz Data
                                  • STAT
                                  • Product Updates
                                  Moz Solutions
                                  • SMB Solutions
                                  • Agency Solutions
                                  • Enterprise Solutions
                                  Free SEO Tools
                                  • Domain Authority Checker
                                  • Link Explorer
                                  • Keyword Explorer
                                  • Competitive Research
                                  • Brand Authority Checker
                                  • MozBar Extension
                                  • MozCast
                                  Resources
                                  • Blog
                                  • SEO Learning Center
                                  • Help Hub
                                  • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                                  • How-to Guides
                                  • Moz Academy
                                  • API Docs
                                  About Moz
                                  • About
                                  • Team
                                  • Careers
                                  • Contact
                                  Why Moz
                                  • Case Studies
                                  • Testimonials
                                  Get Involved
                                  • Become an Affiliate
                                  • MozCon
                                  • Webinars
                                  • Practical Marketer Series
                                  • MozPod
                                  Connect with us

                                  Contact the Help team

                                  Join our newsletter

                                  Access all your tools in one place. Whether you're tracking progress or analyzing data, everything you need is at your fingertips.

                                  Moz logo
                                  © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                                  • Accessibility
                                  • Terms of Use
                                  • Privacy

                                  Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.