Google still indexing home page even after with 301 - Ecommerce Website

[David1986]

Hi all,
We have a 301 redirect problem. Google seems to continue indexing a 301 redirect to our old home page. Even after months.

We have a multiple language domain, with subfolders:

• www.example.com (ex page, now with a redirect to the right locale in the right country)
• www.example.com/it/home (canonical)
• www.example.com/en/home (canonical)
• www.example.com/es/home (canonical)
• www.example.com/fr/home (canonical)
• www.example.com/de/home (canonical)

We still see the old page (www.example.com) in Google results, with old metadata in English and, just in some countries (i.e.: France), we see the correct result, the "new" homepage, www.example.com/fr/home in first position.
The real problem is that Google is still indexing and showing www.example.com as the "real" and "trusted" URL, even if we set:

• a 301 redirect
• the right language for every locale in Google Search Console
• a canonical tag to the locale url
• an hreflang tag inside the code
• a specific sitemap with hreflang tag specified for the new homepages

Now our redirect process is the following (Italy example).
www.example.com -->301
www.example.com/en/home --> default version --->301
www.example.com/it/home --> 200

Every online tool, from Moz to Bot simulators see that there is a 301. So Correct.

Google Search Console says that:

• on www.example.com there is a 301 (correct)
• in the internal link section of Google Search Console the www.example.com is still in first position with 34k links. Many of these links are cominig from property subdomains. Should we change those links inside those third level domain? From www.example.com to www.example.com/LOCALE/home?
• the www.example.com/LOCALE/home are the real home page, they give 200 code

Do you know if there's a way to delete the old home page from Google results since this is 301?

Do you think that, even after a 301 redirect, if Google sees too many internal links decides to ignore the 301?

Thanks for your help!

Davide

[David1986]

Hi Matt,

thanks for your reply!

In the alias section of our ecommerce platform (Demandware) we have set this redirect:

www.example.com --> HomeShow

When HomeShow solves in the locale pipeline (www.example.com/en/home or /it/home etc). Is Demandware that automatically assigns the right home page based on this method:

1. If it is the first time you land on Example and you don't have our cookie, Demandware will set the locale based on your browser language and the country from your IP (we use the country just for the shipping, so in this case we just consider the language).
2. If it is not the first time you see Example.com Demandware will use your cookie stored, using the previous language you set. I.e.: you land for your first time on example.com, you come from Paris, the language was FR but you decided to change in DE for some reason. Then the next time you land on the website you will find DE as language and France as shipping country.

HREFLANG

We use hreflang tag in the code, it works perfectly so if you look for results in specific countries you will always find just the right pages (i.e.: if you look in Google.de all the results are www.example.de/women/etc, same thing for UK, IT, ES). The problem is just associated to the old home page, www.example.com. And all the sitelinks are correct, in the right language.

This is the hreflang tag we have:

WHY AN AUTOMATICALLY REDIRECT INSTEAD OF A LANGUAGE PAGE

Because this is the logic we have adopted behind our ecommerce sites. We could potentially change this method to a splash page but the real problem is that in google.fr everything works perfectly!! It sounds absurd! In Google France we don't see www.example.com, we see the perfect snippet www.example.com/fr/home (if you write the exact query "example" (brand name), because if you look for hybrid keywords you will always find the right page in the right language).

So the problem is just that if you type the query "example" you only see the 301 page www.exmple.com as the first result instead of www.example.com/LOCALE/home.

I have found out that in Google Search Console, inside the internal link section, www.example.com is still in first position, with 37.000 links from different subdomains.

I think that, as Rand Fishkin replied to my email, maybe Google feels free to decide what results display even if there is a redirect 301 that has been set for months. This is the reason why in France everything is ok, but in Italy or Spain is not.

Matt, what do you think about this? Sorry for length of this post but I had to explain all the aspects.

Thanks in advance!

Davide

[mattdinbrooklyn]

Sorry are you 301 redirecting www.example.com to www.example.com/es/home in Spain? Also when are you redirecting www.example/en/home?

There's a lot of questions here. First are you using href lang tags? Second, why did you decide to redirect instead of setting up a language page?

Moz themselves (https://moz.com/learn/seo/international-seo) recommend that site should not "automatically redirect a user to a different language based on location" and instead "show search engines which languages you're set up to handle using hreflang or language meta tags—bits of code that indicate which language(s) your content is available in."

Why did you decide on a redirect. Also why do you have home in the URL as well?