I know we are way too late for this, but why did your company decide to internationalize the site structure if you can't get localization resources. I would have suggested using cookies and JS to set the currency, etc.

Anyway to your questions:

Or am I chasing ghost and this rule won't change much in the eyes of Google and my ranking? You can implement the title rule above, but I don't think it is going to help much.

**I don't care so much if US content shows up in the UK in term of content though are eCommerce experts would be quite pissed off as it would biased reporting. **

I recommend setting up IP location detection. If the user SEEMS to be in a different country, ask them if they are from the other country and if they say yes, then redirect them there. Don't assume they are in a specific country though.

Focus on getting those resources, you won't make a big impact without them in a high competition area.

1. Can I create a rule for page titles to be "Product A - country - company name" or similar? Would that be enough to make the page titles unique? Is there any value doing so?
I think this depends on a few things.

**First, what is the competition like in the SERPs? if you are in a super competitive space in any of those countries, this is probably not going to be enough. But it is possible it would be in some but not others. Competitive markets are game changers. **

**Second, how much do you care if the US content shows up in the UK? I worry about the similarities of the content in your examples. A title tag can get stupid "duplicate title" warnings to disappear, but I can't promise it'll make a difference in the SERPs. **

There is no harm in trying, however.

2. Can I "localize" duplicate MD by simply naming the country? I assume it is not enough in this case as all the rest would be copy/pasted.

**Duplicate MDs are less of a worry from my perspective. What I'd worry about more is the duplication of the actual pages. The content on the page is infinitely more important than what is in the MD. **

Perfect candidate for geo-targeting! You can keep them on one domain though if you're interested. You can do subfolders and geo-target each, but not sure if that works with your setup. Regardless, if you do the .com, and want that to be US only, make sure to claim that domain in GSC and Bing WMT as the US. .com is a general TLD, so it doesn't auto-geo-target. ccTLDs like .co.uk do automatically take care of this.

Keep in mind that in best practices, if you have two pages with the same content across two domains, usually the SEs will pick one, the older stronger one. Try to find a way to differentiate the content that is the same across the two sites. You can also use hreflang between the two sites to help the association, but that is really meant for translated content only. However, people have seen it help.

To ensure people are getting to the right content, I recommend detecting the user's location by IP and ASKING if they live in the US, UK or others you might geo-target. Then set a cookie. They will always get to the right content. Google will crawl from the US, ignore the JS for the most part, and will index everything.

Think about the .com and subfolder idea, that might be better for you.

Hi Moon boots!

First be aware of the .eu TLD, it isn't a geo-targeted TLD as the EU isn't a country. Keep that in mind, you can't target regions, just countries.

Can I ask why you want to go down the route of ccTLDs? Does your content need to be different in each country? There is no problem with keeping everything on a .com, but let me know if there are external factors at play here.

Where you host the TLDs doesn't matter much. The localization is a signal, but not a huge one. If you can give us some insight into your situation, we can help better. Thanks!

The x-default is just what the link you provided says it is:

From Google: The reserved value hreflang="x-default" is used when no other language/region matches the user's browser setting. This value is optional, but recommended, as a way for you to control the page when no languages match. A good use is to target your site's homepage where there is a clickable map that enables the user to select their country.

If you use it for just one language, the issue comes when you have more than one language. The setup for x-default is for when there is no language detected, not that a general, non-regional language is detected.

Actually, the x-default is meant to be for a page that allows users to select a country/language combination.

Alexis, in theory, what you are proposing should work. However, it is not always perfect. There is so much that goes into how Google serves content to each user. You might not see it working perfectly every time, but you can use the non-country with two country-specific hreflang tags together.

In fact, the country coded hreflang tags were meant to be dialect-specific. So a site could have US English content and UK English content, but also more general English content for the rest of the English speaking people.

In fact, it sounds like if the only thing changing is the currency, you might try geo-targeting subfolders. You can do hreflang in addition to that, but geotargeting is what is meant to be used here.

1. Content for CA: https://www.domain.com/ca/content
2. Content for GB: https://www.domain.com/gb/content
3. General Content: https://www.domain.com/content

Claim the subfolders in Google Search Console as different properties and then target each one to those countries in the International Targeting area.

Then add hreflang the way you mentioned with those URLs. However, this setup won't work if you are doing things with another language mixed in. If you are planning on that, let me know.

Hi Paris,

First, can you clarify if you are just translating the content or if you are targeting specific countries? It sounds like you are geo-targeting, but I am not sure.

Second, any page, no matter it's geo-targeting can show up in any Google search, regardless of the country of the user and content. If that is the best content for the user's query, Google will show it. This is why we see .co.uk results here in the US all the time.

Can you share what URL was redirected to what URL?

Is there some reason they only want to target the US and UK and not Australia or Canada for instance?

If it is alright with them, I would just have one site. Targeted at western-type English speaking travelers. If you can't produce a different site for the US AND the UK separately, then just create one.

Unless there is another reason it is just the US and UK. Please share if so!

Actually, geo-basedIP redirects are still a very bad idea from a user and bot perspective.

1. While Google has said it is testing crawling from other areas, they still primarilycrawl from the US. If you do Geo-basedredirects, they will only ever see the US content.
2. Users travel. People travel. Assuming a user should only see a certain set of content based on their physical location is assuming too much.

• Use case in the consumer field: While attending a friend's wedding in London, I could not get to the US version of a site where I wanted to buy furniture to be delivered in a few weeks.
• Use case in business: Users travel for business all the time. If they are visiting a headquarters in another country but researching a topic for use in their home country, they might be seeing the "wrong content."

Rather than assuming, use IP detection to ask the user to set their location. "We see you are in the UK, do you want to set that as your preferred location?" Once they choose their location, a cookie is set and that is all that user sees from then on out, until they change that setting in the footer or in their account.

If the content is the same, but translated, without the hreflang tag, it is duplicate content. The hreflang tag is there to serve as a signal that you know the content is the same but translated and you want Google to know that as well. This situation is exactly what hreflang is made for.

I don't see an ad for "Key Industrial" - I'd look at the settings and budget. Are you targeting a different geography now? Cut the budget at all?

This one is tough.

1. Are there negatives on the brand campaign/ad group?

2. Did you check your brand term in the AdWords Keyword Planner? How does it look in there?

3. Have you checked your brand name in Google Trends?

And if you don't mind sharing, what is the brand name?