How does Google Serve the correct language version?

[daracreative]

Hi guys,

I'm currently working on a multi lingual .eu website with 20 lanuages which has been live now for a month now.

Its is a sub directory set up so the french language version would look something like www.example.eu/fr. The English language version defaults to the home page www.example.eu.

When you search for the brand name on the local search engines the home page English version appears instead of the preferred language version for each Country.

90% of the external links so far link to the homepage so I'm guessing this is the reason why.

We are still waiting for the development company to create sitemap for each language using the  rel=”alternate” hreflang=”x” XML Sitemap Tool.

I know Google look at a number of factors when deciding what results to give a  user.

Can anybody share their experience or advice here?

Thanks

Rob

[RikkiD22]

Hi Rob,

This is a tricky subject and I have a client with a similar issue.

We added the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tag in the head section as suggested here http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=189077 but the results are not conclusive as yet.

I would be keen to hear other peoples thought on this subject too.

Rikki

[gfiorelli1]

If you targeting a country, then you should also geotarget each subfolder to its corresponding country in Google Webmaster Tools.

[RikkiD22]

Thanks Gianluca, I have done that too with the EU domain to all the specific countries.

One quick question though. There is a separate US domain (the original domain of the country) which outranks the EU domain in the UK on nearly all occasions.

Apart from the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tag what can we do with the US domain to ensure the EU domain ranks in EU countries?

[daracreative]

Hi Gianluca,

What if the site is a multi-lingual site (sub folder) and I submit the French language version to webmaster tools www.example.eu/fr and target it to France, add the French language site map also. What happens to the French version of the site if somebody's searches the belgian search engine for the brand or keywords related as they speak French as well?

[gfiorelli1]

Mmm... the US tld is a country level one, hence it geotarget automatically the USA.

In your case may seem that it outrank the EU one in UK because of its stronger DA and link profile.

Said that: did you implemented the hreflang also in the US site, so to tell Google that users from UK should not see the .us Urls but the .eu english ones? Hreflang works crossdomain too, remember.

[RikkiD22]

Thanks Gianluca.

Yeah we implemented cross site hreflang tags on the US site also.

I thought the site strength / DA would be the issue as the US site has been established much longer. It has a 42 DA compared to the EU 30.

Getting the EU DA to 'overtake' the US in order to outrank it in the UK (and other EU countries) seems like a longer process though. It is a shame there is nothing else we can do to resolve this quicker really.

[gfiorelli1]

In your case you first must have clear what are your objectives.

In fact, if you are aiming to target all the french speaking persons independently of where they are (as in your hipothesis), then you should not geotarget your subfolders at all, but rely on the hreflang mark up:

[daracreative]

Hi Gianluca,

I have instructed the developers to insert this mark-up into the site now. Would you mind having a quick look to see if its now correct?

If you look at the lines 124 to 147 in the source code the tag looks like it is set-up for each country.

http://consumerclassroom.eu/fr

Regards

Rob

[gfiorelli1]

The URLs must be absolute, not relative

href="http:www.domain.com/fr/" and not href="/fr/"

[daracreative]

Super, Thanks Gianluca for the spot.