Google is mixing subdomains. What can we do?

[fabrizzio]

The problem I see with geo targeting through webmasters tool is that I can pick a country and not a language.

For example I have a portuguese version for Brzil and Portugal. I know this is not the best approach cause both languages has its differences, but I can say this website is for Portugal OR Brazil. Not for poruguese speaking countries.

[irvingw]

Add meta language tags to their respective pages.

you can also add local content like country name to the content to help give google more hints.

[jesse-landry]

why would you want google to crawl your mobile site?

[fabrizzio]

I have this on all my pages:

http-equiv="Content-Language" content="nl" /> or this http-equiv="Content-Language" content="de" />

that's why I'm clueless

[fabrizzio]

Maybe the mobile in particular is a bad example because you are right, I can restrict access to it. But It's happening with the site in other languages too.

[jesse-landry]

oh i gotcha. yeah that makes sense then... irving has you on the right track. i don't know much about multi-language web work

still i would no-crawl that mobile site and that will fix one of your problems at least.

good luck!

[irvingw]

What is making you think your rankings are compromised?

This is new Google, treating subdomains like part of your site, really they are - just separated by a dot instead of a slash. now if they are showing results from one country in another countries google, that's an issue but geo targeting subdomains in WMT will take care of that.

[iQandil]

Hi Fabrizzo,

There are a few things you will need to do to help Google make a decision of which part of your website (whether its a subdomain or a subfolder). For example on the mobile-friendly website you will need to use the HTML annotation:

And on the desktop site you will need to add the canonical meta:

This way, you are telling google that  these two pages are the same pages, but one is for mobile and the other is for desktop users.

As for countries websites, you this is what Google looks at when they crawl your web pages:

• ccTLDs (country-code top-level domain names).
• Geotargeting settings. You can use the geotargeting tool in Webmaster Tools to indicate to Google that your site is targeted at a specific country. (If you have different subdomains then create a separate profile for each on Webmaster tool and assign each to a different country.)
• Server location (through the IP address of the server). The server location is often physically near your users and can be a signal about your site’s intended audience.
• Other signals. Other sources of clues as to the intended audience of your site can include local addresses and phone numbers on the pages, the use of local language and currency, links from other local sites, and/or the use of Google Places (where available).

(Source for this is Google support article #182192

In your situation i think you will need to 1) Use a dedicated Webmastertools profile for each countries domain. 2) use rel="alternate" hreflang="x" (see examples below)

• HTML link element. In the HTML  section of http://www.example.com/, add a linkelement pointing to the Spanish version of that webpage at http://es.example.com/, like this:

• HTTP header. If you publish non-HTML files (like PDFs), you can use an HTTP header to indicate a different language version of a URL:

  Link: <http: es.example.com="">; rel="alternate"; hreflang="es"</http:>
  

• Sitemap. Instead of using markup, you can submit language version information in a Sitemap.

I hope this helps, let me know if you have more Qs

Best,

Issa

[fabrizzio]

Exactly that's the issue. For example I go to google.com.mx and I see my domain spanish domain with sitelinks pointing to my dutch domain!

The problem I see with geotargeting with WM is what I mentioned above. Portugal and Brazil share the same language: portuguese. But in webmaster tools I can't say pt.domain.com is intented for Brzil and Portugal. I need to pick only one.

[fabrizzio]

Thanks for the answer.

Of what you suggested, I have canonicals and content language meta tag.

I haven't tried the yet. Maybe that helps.

I have sitemaps too.

The problem I see with geotargeting with WM is what I mentioned above. Portugal and Brazil share the same language: portuguese. But in webmaster tools I can't say pt.domain.com is intented for Brzil and Portugal. I need to pick only one.

[iQandil]

Hi again,

First of all, canonicals are not enough but definitely its good that you use them.

Alternate rel link tag is very important. Read this link please: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077

As for the XML sitemap, do you use the language markup for each link there? If you want to know how to do that follow this link: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2620865

As for the Portugal and Brazil subdomains, using webmaster tools will surely solve this issue, but even with the language rel tag you have to use different language codes, so "pt" is incorrect, you need to specify the locale as well, so "pt-BR" for Brazilian Portuguese and "pt-PT" for European/Continental/Portugal Portuguese

I hope this clears things up.

Sorry there is no easy way

Best,

Issa

[fabrizzio]

But I don't have two websites for portuguese. I have one.

Same happens with German. It is not only speaked in Germany, Austria also has a big part of the country speaking German.

I can't translate my website into all different countries and language variations. I already have more than 10 so I can tell that is hard to maintain

Basically what sounds contradictory to me is that I'm not using a country approach but a language approach like many websites. But still Google is getting confused with it.

[iQandil]

Hi,

I understand you dont have two website, but you said somewhere you are using subdomains. For search engines every subdomain is a completely different DNS recored, so treated as a different website.

No one is saying you need to translate your website, however, the changes above need to be done to whatever languages you already have. You would need an army of people to translate to all languages and of course a million USD! Haha!

As I said before, language approach is not enough, you need to use the locale approach too. For example, English is spoken in many countries (like Australia, Canada, US, UK, New Zealand, South Africa). Same as German and a few other languages, so if you dont couple language with country, search engines will get confused.

I hope this helps

Issa

[fabrizzio]

So your suggestion is to use something like this:

<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="pt-br">and the expression br-PT constructed the first part with the website language and geodetecting the second part of the string (the PT)?</meta http-equiv="content-language" content="pt-br">

[iQandil]

Please do go through this link which has a wealth of information and its by Google so nothing better to trust:

But yes for Brazil related pages use

<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="pt-br"> </meta http-equiv="content-language" content="pt-br">

and