Geotargeting issue

[Tourman]

Hi,

So ive just starting working on a travel website and noticed that the .com website outranks the com.au in Australian SERPS, even though the .au site has been geotargeted (In GWT) for Australia.I also geotargeted the .com website to Canada (the primary place of business).

Is this advisable? Will this affect rankings?

[RobertFisher]

Tourman

It is likely the change in GWT to .com being set as CA preference will affect the ranking in AU of the .com. If the .com was not on a CA server it is more likely. Since you want the .com to rank in CA primarily and you have a .com.au site, assuming you have covered your bases with regards to other countries you want to rank in, you are going in the correct direction.

[Tourman]

Thanks for the response Robert,

Any idea how long it takes for Google to react to the changes?

[RobertFisher]

I would be surprised if it took more than a few days. Given your site has been up and ranked, wont take long to reindex.

[Tourman]

So a follow up on the .com outranking the .com.au for our company- both the geotargeting parameters have been set .com (Canada) and .au (Australia). However nothing has changed in the rankings. Also checked GWT, both sites have definately been crawled since.

Any advice on what else to do?

[RobertFisher]

Just because there is a reindex, does not guarantee that the rankings change that quickly. You should watch it and see. One thing to remember, make sure you are using a non personalized search when looking or run the rankings in moz.

I would watch it over a few weeks and see if you see movement.