Multi Store SEO Drop

[moon-boots]

I have two stores (thespacecollective.com and thespacecollective.com/us) and over the past month the keyword rank for the US store had dropped by half, while the UK store is relatively the same. The content is mostly the same, except the US site uses US spelling. I assumed that this would not be flagged as duplicate content because it is the same site, just serving two locations.

I'd be interested to hear some thoughts on the reason for this drop and how I might fix it.

[katemorris]

The redirect service is the gray area here for me. I don't know them or their services. With that parameter in play, you need the self-referring canonical. The hreflang is set up right now, but I don't know how all of this is interacting together.

I'd suggest starting by addressing the hreflang with the parameters in them. Make sure those parameters are not in the hreflang tags.  Also, do you have sitemaps for both languages submitted to Google?

For what it is worth, I don't see things wrong in the SERPs. You are still on the first page for 'NASA gifts' and 'meterorite gifts' in the US. What other drops are you seeing? Some adjustment is expected when making changes like this.

[moon-boots]

All UK and USA website traffic has both dropped by 70% since I made the initial change you suggested.

The georedirect section of the URL is from an external redirect service called geotargetly.com

[katemorris]

Can you tell me specifically what is plummeting? Just this page? All US, All UK pages? If you can share specifics, I can try to ID what is up. My theory is that the canonical is messing with things, but since you had the issue with parameters in some indexed URLs, it seemed relevant to keep in.

In face, I am digging a little, and when I google your name from my location in the US, this is the first page:

view-source:https://www.thespacecollective.com/us/archive?utm_source=georedirect

The hreflang there has that utm source in it. There is something that might be messing things up. Any idea where that thing is coming from yet? It seems very prevalent.

Also, how is the traffic to your site? With your rankings down, I'd assume a major drop in traffic. But if the URLs with that parameter are taking over, you might still be getting traffic, just to the wrong URL.

[moon-boots]

I believe it has now been done correctly as of a week ago, and yet, my rank continues to plummet - literally plummet.

[katemorris]

It is possible that fluctuations will happen once the canonical is removed. That tag was equating the two pages and google was in the middle of trying to figure out that they were similar but not the same. So removing that canonical is going to reset the pages for a bit. If you are seeing a drop, I expect it to come back up shortly as long as the hreflang is there.

I looked at: view-source:https://www.thespacecollective.com/us/meteorite-jewellery

And am seeing:

<link  rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="<a class="attribute-value">https://www.thespacecollective.com/us/meteorite-jewellery</a>" /> <link  rel="<a class="attribute-value">alternate</a>" hreflang="<a class="attribute-value">en-US</a>" href="<a class="attribute-value">https://www.thespacecollective.com/us/meteorite-jewellery</a>" /> <link  rel="<a class="attribute-value">alternate</a>" hreflang="<a class="attribute-value">x-default</a>" href="<a class="attribute-value">https://www.thespacecollective.com/us/meteorite-jewellery</a>" />

So with the above, you are confusing Google. That is says that it is it's own canonical (good) and is a language variation but you provide no others (including the strong page that is the UK). Rather than the above, it should be this: 

<link rel="<a class="attribute-value">canonical</a>" href="<a class="attribute-value">https://www.thespacecollective.com/us/meteorite-jewellery</a>" /> <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">alternate</a>" hreflang="<a class="attribute-value">en-US</a>" href="<a class="attribute-value">https://www.thespacecollective.com/us/meteorite-jewellery</a>" /> <link rel="<a class="attribute-value">alternate</a>" hreflang="<a class="attribute-value">en-GB</a>" href="<a class="attribute-value">https://www.thespacecollective.com/meteorite-jewellery</a>" />

The X-default is meant for pages that allow the user to select a country and/or language for a big company like IKEA or fedex. 
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[moon-boots]

Is it a coincidence that my rank for both sites just dropped by nearly 40% each after making this change?

[moon-boots]

That is news to me! Thank you so much for this. I will remove all of the canonical tags and leave only the hreflang, and see how this effects the site rank.

[katemorris]

No canonical at all for either side, rather they should have hreflang tags that act as canonicals but not as strong (they are specific for language differences).

[moon-boots]

Thank you so much Kate. Just to double check, are you saying that there should be no canonical tag at all on the US site? Or just one (leading to the UK or US site)?

[katemorris]

Ah, apologies on the logs thing! You can read more about it here: https://moz.com/blog/server-log-essentials-for-seo

It's not something you can see from search console. You'll need to get to your logs from your website host. Do you have a developers you can talk to or a website host team that can help you out?

The canonical!!!! Yeah, that is a problem! You should not use a canonical when dealing with international signals. You need to use HREFLANG. https://moz.com/learn/seo/hreflang-tag

On the linking, if Moz isn't showing anything, consider looking at search console. There is a links area, and if you can find the URL in the list of top pages, Google will give you an idea of where they found that URL.

[moon-boots]

I'm sure not what you mean by "check your crawl logs", can you please elaborate on that? Check them where exactly? I looked in the Google Search Console but there was no reference to IP addresses in any logs.

I tried looking up the linking domains in the Moz Link Explorer for "thespacecollective.com/ ‎us/meteorite-jewellery?utm_source=georedirect‎" but it just says that it isn't a valid domain... so I'm not sure how to check how the URL is being linked to either.

I also noticed on the US site there are two canonical (attached), one for the UK and one for the US. This could be causing problems - I need to find out what is causing this and stop it. On that note, even the US site should still canonical to the UK site, right? Otherwise we would have two sites canonicalising to themselves respectively.

Thank you for your help thus far!

ubaGA4B

[katemorris]

It can have SEO impact as Google primarily crawls from the US. They will from other locations but this has flip flopped over the years. This might be something that is causing this problem, if they are getting redirected to the US side but see many people mentioning the main domain (what you call the UK side).  You can check by looking at your logs for when Google crawls and check the IP address in their list mentioned here. https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6144055?hl=en That will narrow down if it is a problem.

However, I do want to stress that using IP based redirects is frowned upon from a usability perspective. Giving people more choices is almost always better. A situation to consider outside of the issue that Google itself crawls from the US: When not in COVID times, people travel. I once tried to design my IKEA kitchen when traveling for work. I went back to continue my design I did one night in my hotel room, and it was gone! Little did I know, the design I did was on the UK side. People travel and you don't want to stop that from happening.

I get your point though, which is why it is preferred to do something like, funny enough they figured it out, IKEA does. If you go to ikea.com fresh, they welcome you with a message that they think you are in the US. It doesn't have to be a whole page, many sites use popups. But I would strongly urge you to consider this. And with that, I promise to drop the subject

Now, back to ranking. I see you at #6, and I am fresh eyes in the US space. I looked for NASA gifts and got this at exactly #6.

Where are you looking at ranking? Moz or Google Search Console or ?

I do see the issue with the meteorite jewelry. I see the URL https://www.thespacecollective.com/us/meteorite-jewellery?utm_source=georedirect -- It's canonicalized properly, so Google is being ... annoying. I would, if you have time, take a look at how that is exact URL is linked to. Somehow, that one is seen as particularly powerful, so if you can narrow down where it is and get that parameter removed, that should change over time.

[moon-boots]

Hi Kate,

Thanks for answering. The redirect is deliberate, we do not want our customers to have a choice - if they're in the US or ROW, they go to the US site, if they're in the EU, they go to the UK site - anything else would be detrimental. So long as this doesn't negatively affect SEO, it is the perfect solution for us.

"NASA gifts" is a good example. We were 6th and now relegated to 51+, or "Meteorite Gifts", we were 2nd and not 51+.

"Meteorite Jewelry" took a nosedive too (thespacecollective.com/us/meteorite-jewellery?utm_source=georedirect) and I noticed the URL is picking up the redirect, that can't be good (attached).

VZNs6xa

[katemorris]

First major thing, you are auto redirecting based on the user's location. I would not do that, rather ask the user where they want to go. But that is more of a usability thing.

Second, I don't see an issue with one search for "nasa mercury memorbilia" - the US page showed up for me. Can you be more specific about the terms and pages that are seeing problems? Below was my earch result and it is for the US page (I checked to  be sure, not just going to the page).