Google Search Console and User-declared canonical is actually Hreflang tag

[PeterRubber]

Hey,

We recently launched a US version of UK based ecommerce website on the us.example.com subdomain. Both websites are on Shopify so canonical tags are handled automatically and we have implemented Hreflang tags across both websites.

Suddenly our rankings in the UK have dropped and after looking in search console for the UK site ive found that a lot of pages are now no longer indexed in Google because the User-declared canonical is the Hreflang tag for the US URL.

Below is an example

https://www.example.com/products/pac-man-arcade-cabinet - is the product page

• is the canonical tag

rel="alternate" href="https://www.example.com/products/pac-man-arcade-cabinet" hreflang="en-gb" /> - UK hreflang tag

rel="alternate" href="https://us.example.com/products/pac-man-arcade-cabinet" hreflang="en-us" /> - US Hreflang tag

then in Google search console the user-defined canonical is https://us.example.com/products/pac-man-arcade-cabinet but it should be https://www.example.com/products/pac-man-arcade-cabinet

The UK website has been assigned to target the United Kingdom in Search Console and the US website has been assigned to target the United States. We also do not have access to robots.txt file unfortunately.

Any help or insight would be greatly appreciated.

[katemorris]

The UK website has been assigned to target the United Kingdom in Search Console and the US website has been assigned to target the United States. We also do not have access to robots.txt file, unfortunately.

So you have claimed www.domain.com and targeted it to the UK. And you have claimed us.domain.com and targeted it to the US in Search Console?

And for the two URLs below are these tags all on each page exactly as I have them below?

https://www.example.com/products/pac-man-arcade-cabinet

• • is the canonical tag
• <link rel="alternate" href="https: www.example.com="" products="" pac-man-arcade-cabinet" hreflang="en-gb">- UK hreflang tag</link rel="alternate" href="https:>
• <link rel="alternate" href="https: us.example.com="" products="" pac-man-arcade-cabinet" hreflang="en-us">- US Hreflang tag</link rel="alternate" href="https:>

https://us.example.com/products/pac-man-arcade-cabinet

• • is the canonical tag
• <link rel="alternate" href="https: www.example.com="" products="" pac-man-arcade-cabinet" hreflang="en-gb">- UK hreflang tag</link rel="alternate" href="https:>
• <link rel="alternate" href="https: us.example.com="" products="" pac-man-arcade-cabinet" hreflang="en-us">- US Hreflang tag</link rel="alternate" href="https:>

Where are you searching from? What are you searching? And is there anything different between those two pages other than targeting? Do you redirect users based on IP?