International domain (.es) ranks better than (.com)

Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi

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International domain (.es) ranks better than (.com)

TigerAlgebra

10:48 am on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

Hi All,

Great resource here, hoping to get an answer to my dilemma from you guys.

I have a website (.com) for which I have other domains (.es, .de, .ru) which are machine (bing) translations of the main english (.com) site.

Since a few days, a search on the google.com for "Site Name" returns the .es site instead of the .com one.

Anybody has any ideas where to get started on fixing this?

Thanks in advance,

Tiger Algebra

goodroi

1:31 pm on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

What country are you in (or what country is your proxy going through)?

TigerAlgebra

1:49 pm on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

I am in Germany but I query google.com and tell G I want results in English.

Where are you? What are you seeing if I may ask?

Lame_Wolf

2:32 pm on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

I am in the UK, but use google.com
I see .es site at the top of the serps. When I access the site, the language is English, but a few moments later it changes language.

TigerAlgebra

2:42 pm on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

Hi Lame_Wolf and thanks for checking.

Yes, this is the problem, the .es ranks before the .com and is automatically translated.

this is what I'm wandering how to fix.

Any ideas?

Lame_Wolf

2:48 pm on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

I cannot help, sorry. I've had no reason to dabble in this area. One problem I see for you is that the adverts remain in English, which isn't what the average user will want to see if they are reading a site in their own language. So that is another problem you may have to fix.

RedBar

3:59 pm on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

Welcome to WebmasterWorld TigerAlgebra

I've checked with Firefox, Opera, Chrome, SeaMonkey, K-Meleon, MSIE and even Netscape Navigator and all work fine for me, no change of language whatsoever.

I run very clean browsers and clear cache and history every time I close them, check these are clean.

I also only allow cookies on specific browsers, the others all reject them.

TigerAlgebra

4:01 pm on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

Hi RedBar,

Thanks for your input. The question here, is what do you see on the SERPS. Do you see site-name.es or .com?

Thanks again for your time.

RedBar

4:03 pm on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

Ahhh...it's happening from a Google search, now I see but you have further problems when entering your extensions. For instance when typing in your .de:

Server Error in '/' Application.

Object reference not set to an instance of an object.

not2easy

4:03 pm on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

Google has advice for sites that have sections translated for different languages which is different than having different sites with the same content. You may find help in reading their recommendations here: [support.google.com...]

Many websites serve users from around the world with content translated or targeted to users in a certain region. Google uses the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" attributes to serve the correct language or regional URL in Search results.

TigerAlgebra

4:10 pm on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

Thanks not2easy,

Looks like a promising direction, I'll implement this tomorrow.

If anybody else has another idea, I'd love to know.

RedBar

4:12 pm on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

The question has to be why is it almost immediately translating into Spanish? Using your language navigation and all works well, have you changed something recently and messed-up a very tiny piece of code?

TigerAlgebra

4:17 pm on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

RedBar, thanks for your involvement.

The .es is supposed to work that way.
It loads the English content and does an ajax translation using the Bing translator, its not a perfect UX, but for non English speakers, its better than nothing.

The issue I am struggling with is that people search in English and get the .es result.

aakk9999

4:22 pm on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

Mods note:
I have intended this not to go so far (public site review), but whilst I was writing a sticky, the thread progressed into site review. In this particular case we will make exception providing we are sticking to this particular issue (language detection) and do not progress into reviewing other aspects of the site.

Lame_Wolf informed me he tried the site in IE8. So did I and I got the same - the site showed in English first, then changed to Spanish - but this only happened in IE8.

When I tried in Firefox, I got the site in Spanish.

I think this is because of some conditional code, such as this one:


<!--[if lt IE 7 ]><html class="ie ie6" lang="en"> <![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 7 ]><html class="ie ie7" lang="en"> <![endif]-->
<!--[if IE 8 ]><html class="ie ie8" lang="en"> <![endif]-->
<!--[if (gte IE 9)|!(IE)]><!-->
<html lang="es">

Who knows what kind of conditional code there is and what Googlebot executes (or not).

I would also like to comment on HTTP 500, which, when reading the error, is cloaking (if google, redirect to en site).

I would take this out and fix the site properly.

I would also remove automatic translation or at least noindex automatically translated pages.

TigerAlgebra

4:27 pm on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

Thanks aakk9999,

This is most helpful.
I appreciate the feedback and will have a busy day tomorrow :)

aakk9999

4:28 pm on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

The .es is supposed to work that way.
It loads the English content and does an ajax translation using the Bing translator,

It appears Google sees it as English and ignores (or is not seeing) Ajax translation. So out of two versions of English site, Google decided that it will rank .es rather than .com

RedBar

5:08 pm on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

Since a few days,

I'm assuming it was working ok before then and the .com was the first result?

If so what did you change in the last couple of weeks?

TigerAlgebra

5:30 pm on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

Thanks RedBar.

Thanks aakk9999.

You guys have been very helpful.

I'm going to redirect the .es domain to .com and stop linking to the .es pages. Does this sound like a good plan?

not2easy

5:44 pm on Nov 5, 2014 (gmt 0)

Before making sudden changes that you might need to change again, it is better to take the time to study what the best way is, understanding first what is happening, then what you want to happen.

To help Google crawl and read AJAX pages they have suggestions here: [developers.google.com...]

TigerAlgebra

10:18 am on Dec 1, 2014 (gmt 0)

Reporting back. Based on the great advice here, I ended up removing the .es site through Google webmaster tools and the issue was resolved within 48 hours.

Thanks to all who responded.

RedBar

11:05 am on Dec 1, 2014 (gmt 0)

Excellent, that quick, it just goes to show G does work properly some times!