International tld urls appearing in Google.com results

[onlinesource]

I manage multiple stores under my Mangento which include mysite.com (the default store), mysite.ca, mysite.co.uk and mysite.in. I modeled my setup off of Cafe Press which does the same thing. In fact, mysite.com/product.html and mysite.ca/product.html are very similar since both stores share the same catalog of products, pages, etc. The main difference is the .ca store uses CAD pricing and .com USD but on the surface both are very similar. I also see Amazon do this and without posting links, all anybody has to do is go to any product url and change the tld and see the difference. There is very little.

Now, in my head code, I have hreflang alternate url tags pointing each visitor to the correct store. When I run tests on my hreflang tag coding, I see no errors. Currently in GWT > Search Traffic > International Targeting there are 0 hrelfang tags so each store is properly tagging the next.

My concern is when I search in Google.ca for keywords like "widgets" the .ca url is the first of any of my urls to show up and it ranks very well. Meaning that I don't notice .co.uk results ahead of .ca results in Google.ca. The .com site is nowhere to be found too. Yes I can search mysite.com in Google.ca and see it but it is not listed for specific keyword specific results.

Now if I go to Google.com, what is strange is the first site of mine that comes up when I search "widgets" is mysite.ca. Why would this be? I would think that the .com site would appear first and then maybe the others?

In GTW > International Targeting I don't set a country for the .com site but in the .ca profile, it's set to Canada and .co.uk to UK etc. If the .ca profile is set to Canada, why would the results appear as well as they do in Google.com? I understand that some .ca results from Amazon appear in Google.com but if I search specific keywords in Google.com, the Amazon site most likely to appear would be the .com site.

Trying to figure out what causes Google to choose to display these results like they do?

[onlinesource]

Checking my hreflang tags coding

My Magento shop because I have manager multiple stores, uses hreflang alternate urls. I have 4 domains in a total, a default .com domain, a .ca, .co.uk and .in.

Currently my code is such such.

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.mysite.com/page.html"/>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-CA" href="https://www.mysite.ca/page.html"/>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-IN" href="https://www.mysite.in/page.html"/>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" href="https://www.mysite.co.uk/page.html"/>

In Google Webmaster Tools under search traffic > International Traffic it shows 470+ hreflang tags and 0 with errors. So everything seems GREAT! Then I check hreflang.ninja. Has anybody used this site? For the .ca result it says:

Return tag error (page does not link back)
Language-region code has no standalone language code

First of all I can load [mysite.ca...] and see in the header:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://www.mysite.com/page.html"/>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-CA" href="https://www.mysite.ca/page.html"/>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-IN" href="https://www.mysite.in/page.html"/>
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GB" href="https://www.mysite.co.uk/page.html"/>

So not sure why it can't link back? Also strange that Googlebot doesn't seem to be bothered by this.

As far as "Language-region code has no standalone language code" The site is a canadian site written in english so I was told to make the hreflang en-ca. What is wrong with this?

I don't understand if the hreflang.ninja site has bugs or something is wrong that must be fixed?

[rainborick]

I'm answering in this thread because it has more details about your situation.

The fact that your .ca site shows up before the .com in your searches using google.com is unusual. It could be because the .ca domain is nominally stronger, or your results might be influenced by your personal search history or where in the world you are and the .ca domain is the closer match.. Overall, it indicates that your sites are not very strong and I wouldn't expect most users would ever encounter such a mis-match because geo-location/targeting is such a strong ranking factor. This is especially true for County Code Top Level Domains (ccTLDs) like the .ca and the .uk and it means that whatever you do with hreflang us unlikely to have any effect on your sites' performance.

Users from the various countries matching your ccTLDs are almost certainly going to have their browsers set to prefer simply "en" or the local variant (ie. "en-gb") and they'll almost always be served the relevant result from the matching ccTLD. So the availability of language alternatives won't have any significant impact unless you offer a non-English alternative and the user happens prefers that language.

I wouldn't put much more effort into hreflang. I think you'd be much better off spending the time promoting your site directly, building quality links, and adding fresh, original content.

[waitwhiterabbit]

Is the problem that you're getting .ca results for generic queries?

If so some thoughts:

*Run a check to see if real searchers are runing into this issue...*

To get an idea of the scale of the issue, have you checked traffic by country to mysite.ca? Usually, when I see something weird, I try to look at impression data (GSC) or session data (GA) to get an idea of what may be going on and if real visitors are running into this. ...This is a good sanity check, instead of just running queries as to the level of effort you should spend troubleshooting vs other SEO initiatives you have on your radar (to @rainborick 's point)


*Some things i've seen with no return tags...*

I've run into this before in google search console, never used the tool that you mentioned though...issues i've seen is that sometimes perameterized URL's or other nonsense get included into the referenced page and on othertimes on ecomm sites, a product will no longer be available in one GEO but will be available in others, and reflang lang will not update but still link out to the page that does not exist...

*Overall thoughts*

Overall, having the CC tld and international target specified should be enough for Google to get an idea of what is going on...i've mainly used hreflang on websites where not everything was translated as well as we needed or we were in progress of translating navigation and all that stuff just to help google know what the target language for the page is...so, even if you do have a couple not return tags, so long as its not crazy, shouldn't make or break yo (at least based on my experience)