Google cache is showing my UK homepage site instead of the US homepage and ranking the UK site in US
-
Hi There,
When I check the cache of the US website (www.us.allsaints.com) Google returns the UK website. This is also reflected in the US Google Search Results when the UK site ranks for our brand name instead of the US site. The homepage has hreflang tags only on the homepage and the domains have been pointed correctly to the right territories via Google Webmaster Console.This has happened before in 26th July 2015 and was wondering if any had any idea why this is happening or if any one has experienced the same issueFDGjldR
-
Hi,
I thought I would let people know that since we updated the href langs to the below format we are still yet to see the US homepage become visible in Google US and the UK homepage is still ranking
-
Hi Kate,
Thanks for your response I will amend the href lang area as follows:
Just for some background information we originally only had:
Having the above format we still occurred the homepage issue however maybe the removal of will help clear the issue.
Thanks for the feedback, we'll get this live asap and I'll resubmit the the homepages. Another contributing factor is that we do not have href lang site wide.
-
Alright, so this is going to be a long and involved answer.
You are geo-targeting the root domain to the UK, but you also have it double tagged in HREFLANG. One is general English (root domain) and other GB English to the same place. Then you have an x-default pointing to the same place.
Google officially thinks that www.allsaints.com is a general English landing page and are probably ignoring the UK geo-targeting. Due to that, the fact that your root domain homepage is stronger than any other version, and because the content is basically the same, it's seeing what you see as your UK homepage as the root domain homepage without any targeting.
In short, you are sending mixed signals and need to sort that out. This might not all make sense but right now you need to:
- Remove the "en" hreflang tag since you have english variations.
- Remove the x-default hreflang tag since that page is not a place for anyone to land and choose a location/language. (ex. fedex.com)
Doing those two things might help clear up some of the confusion, but I also think you have the wrong international technical strategy. That's a whole other thing. Please DM me if you would like to talk about that, but the above should solve your posted problem.
-
I would attempt to get the US site reindexed by whatever means necessary and then check it.
First, I would add unique content to the US page and fetch again. Also make sure the homepage is in the sitemap - I'm not sure it is.
If you can get the US homepage reindexed, cache should work but I think in this case the cache issue is much smaller. The main issue is that your US homepage has been completely deindexed.
-
Matt,
Thank you for taking the time out to look at this, I very much appreciate that. We have not requested any URL removals for the last six months looking within Google Webmaster Console.
There are no manual spam actions for the site and we checked the https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/change-address?hl=en&siteUrl=www.us.allsaints.com and that hasn't been touched either.
In terms of actions last Friday we changed the meta data for the US, UK, CA, IE domains so they are unique. We also changed the image filenames and alt text as well as some of the copy on the page. After that was done the homepages were submitted to Google index using fetch. I was hoping that those changes would have helped the US appear to be different.
Our other international domain FR, DE, ES, IT are not suffering which lead me to thinking this is a duplicate issue or some how Google is getting confused.
-
Well ... I gave this as thorough a check as I possibly can. Guess what?
It's happening because your www.us.allsaints.com homepage is NOT INDEXED.
- site:fr.allsaints.com (1st result)
- site:es.allsaints.com (1st result)
- site:www.allsaints.com (1st result)
site:www.us.allsaints.com - Nope. You have subpages indexed but not the homepage.
Now, whether that's duplicate content or the massive amount of IP-related spam links to the site is hard to say. But your homepage has been deindexed and because it's not indexed, doesn't show up in the cache.
If you have the site claimed in Search Console, check for penalties. Check that you haven't removed the URL through Google Index > Remove URLs. Check that you haven't done a site move on https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/change-address?hl=en&siteUrl=www.us.allsaints.com
Once the homepage gets indexed, you should be good to go.
-
Hi Matt,
The first red box highlights I am trying to find the cache from www.us.allsaints.com. The second box shows that Google is returning the UK site which is www.allsaints.com and the third box shows our pop up. The pop up is executed when a customer comes online to a one of our sites and we suggest there is a local version which is better for them e.g. If you are from Germany and come to the UK site the pop will come up suggesting going to the Germany site.
In terms of the x-default page would the override the EN-US hreg lang?
-
Hi Kate,
Yes we are geo targeting www.allsaints.com to the UK
I am based in the UK
I used a US proxy using Incognito
Thank you for getting in touch any help would be appreciated
-
The image you posted a link to doesn't say UK anywhere I can see? Google is returning the x-default from your hreflang tags.
Also, from here I see your .com in both the cache and the SERPs. You don't have an Australia language setting so it seems to be working right.
I'm not sure where you're seeing the issue, though. You have three things highlighted in that pic and they are right, right?
-
You're sending a few mixed signals via hreflang. I need to ask a few questions.
- Are you geotargeting www.allsaints.com to the UK?
- Where are you located?
- How did you do the search attached? From what country? Incognito?
-
Moz had a similar caching issue one week ago (/ugc/ content cached instead of /blog/ pages). They posted this question on Webmaster forum - may be the answers can help you find a solution (there was an answer from John Mu as well).
Dirk
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.
Related Questions
-
Trying to get Google to stop indexing an old site!
Howdy, I have a small dilemma. We built a new site for a client, but the old site is still ranking/indexed and we can't seem to get rid of it. We setup a 301 from the old site to the new one, as we have done many times before, but even though the old site is no longer live and the hosting package has been cancelled, the old site is still indexed. (The new site is at a completely different host.) We never had access to the old site, so we weren't able to request URL removal through GSC. Any guidance on how to get rid of the old site would be very appreciated. BTW, it's been about 60 days since we took these steps. Thanks, Kirk
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kbates0 -
Installing SSL to website and site ranking
I am installing SSL to my website. Will it hurt my ranking in Google as the url will change and backlinks of the website are without ssl url.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Esnipper0 -
Is Google Certified shops a ranking factor?
Hi This is to spark a debate, rather than an answer which has a specific answer. While Google may claim that being on the certified programme doesn't increase your ranking, but part of their algorithm looks into whether a website is trustworthy. To get accepted onto the certified shops you have to prove your a trust worthy reliable business that constantly gets audited. So surely this must be directly / indirectly be a ranking factor? Just thought I would throw it out there for a debate.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Andy-Halliday1 -
Why isnt this site ranking?
I just took over for a site and noticed they have no presence for any keywords...not even low ranks. Their backlink profile is not the best, but webmaster tools says they have no manual actions. vonderhaar.com Thoughts on the matter?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Atomicx0 -
Google is squashing my rankings, insight please?
Last year with penguin, our rankings took a hit. We have worked hard, tirelessly, to recover. Last june we had no social media. We had an old website. We completely updated our website to responsive design, over 500k pages. We post daily fresh content, we expanded into social media. We now have 100k followers on Facebook. We are seeing thousands of Google + in the last few months, and not by hiring a single SEO consultant, and we use no ad-words or any paid advertising (except for adsense, limited on our site). We got thousands of Google +1's simply by sharing content in different circles and they liked us the old fashioned way. And yet our rankings have actually decreased. Just Saturday night, suddenly rankings that were on page 2 of Google dropped to page 5. Rankings on page 5 dropped to page 13, over night. Mind you, last year (prior to the penguin update), those page 2 and page 5 rankings were in the top 3 spots on page one. So its been quite a fall. We are doing something wrong, and I don't know what it is. The overnight rankings drop did not correspond with anything we did whatsoever. They just literally dropped abruptly. here is our site: (redacted for privacy, thanks for answering my question!) here is a sample of a fallen ranking. Friday, for example, we ranked on page one of google in this search:(redacted)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | marshill
and now we are on page 3. I am open to ideas, suggestions. I want to raise our D/A and have worked hard over the last year to do so, but it doesn't seem to be working too well. Do i have bad inbound links? Is our site not a quality enough user experience? Outside advice is well received. Thank you to anyone who can lend their insight. 🙂0 -
Google Cache Is Blank for Text-only
Hi, I'm doing some SEO for www.suprafootwear.com, and for some reason when I go to text-only in google cache, nothing shows up. http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:suprafootwear.com&es_sm=91&strip=1 That seems to be the case for all of the different pages on the site, but the content is still appearing on the serp. I have never seen this before, and I'm not sure what's happening. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | bigwavew0 -
What time to expect until onpage change is reflected in google ranking?
Most pages on our site are crawled by google about once per week. We plan to implement a new navigation structure with much more interlinks among our pages. I would like to test it first just for a few pages to measure impact. How long may it take approximately until an onpage change related to link structure is reflected in google rankings? Any experience?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lcourse0 -
How Can I move a site higher in Google Places?
As we all know Google Local Business/Places now has significant real estate for many searches. What I find hard to understand is what makes the difference between the different positions. Is it solely based on the content in Google Places itself or is it regular ranking factors. I am (like everybody) on a hell for leather search to try and rank above my competition but having studied their Places information I do not think there is much I more I can do. Suggestions hat have actually worked for you?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | kdaly1000