How long does internationlisation take to be indexed correctly

[AndrewAkesson]

Hi guys

I have had a UK site that has been indexed in Google for some time. Recently we started targeting Ireland and so I created a folder to do this (domain.com/ireland/)

As well as adding an /irland/ folder I created a hreflang sitemap and in Webmaster Tools I specified that .com/ireland/ targets Ireland and .com targets UK. However this was all two weeks ago and Im still not seeing the Irish pages start ranking in Google.ie and was hoping one of you guys would be able to help me out? How long should it take for these pages to start appearing in the relevant country specific search engine?

Deepcrawl states that the Hreflang is correct as well so Im just a bit worried that Ive missed something glaringly obvious!

Thanks

[DennisSeymour]

Actually, this is pretty hard to answer. I've experienced different timeframes. Some in as short as a week but most took a couple months. It could be dependent on the country or the search term or even the site. That's based on my experience though.

[KristinaKledzik]

I've heard anywhere from 2 - 3 weeks to 2 - 3 months.

Remember, though, that connecting pages with an hreflang tag doesn't make the /ireland/ section of the site magically rank as well as the UK part of the site does in the UK. It's a different page and Google will treat it as such, although Google should definitely show the right page for branded searches.

To increase rankings for the /ireland/ section of the site, you need to prove that your Ireland section is as valuable to Irish people as the UK section is to British people. Do some promotions to build links and get some social media buzz going: that'll help you the most in the long run.

Good luck!

[AndrewAkesson]

Thanks guys. I feel quite confident that i have implemented the sitemap correctly (kinda wish i had done it through metas in the head now though as I think it might get indexed quicker this way)!

It a relief that you both say this could take a couple if months the index correctly and yes I will be doing some promotion for it