Google still indexing home page even after with 301 - Ecommerce Website
-
Hi all,
We have a 301 redirect problem. Google seems to continue indexing a 301 redirect to our old home page. Even after months.We have a multiple language domain, with subfolders:
- www.example.com (ex page, now with a redirect to the right locale in the right country)
- www.example.com/it/home (canonical)
- www.example.com/en/home (canonical)
- www.example.com/es/home (canonical)
- www.example.com/fr/home (canonical)
- www.example.com/de/home (canonical)
We still see the old page (www.example.com) in Google results, with old metadata in English and, just in some countries (i.e.: France), we see the correct result, the "new" homepage, www.example.com/fr/home in first position.
The real problem is that Google is still indexing and showing www.example.com as the "real" and "trusted" URL, even if we set:- a 301 redirect
- the right language for every locale in Google Search Console
- a canonical tag to the locale url
- an hreflang tag inside the code
- a specific sitemap with hreflang tag specified for the new homepages
Now our redirect process is the following (Italy example).
www.example.com -->301
www.example.com/en/home --> default version --->301
www.example.com/it/home --> 200Every online tool, from Moz to Bot simulators see that there is a 301. So Correct.
Google Search Console says that:
- on www.example.com there is a 301 (correct)
- in the internal link section of Google Search Console the www.example.com is still in first position with 34k links. Many of these links are cominig from property subdomains. Should we change those links inside those third level domain? From www.example.com to www.example.com/LOCALE/home?
- the www.example.com/LOCALE/home are the real home page, they give 200 code
Do you know if there's a way to delete the old home page from Google results since this is 301?
Do you think that, even after a 301 redirect, if Google sees too many internal links decides to ignore the 301?
Thanks for your help!
Davide
-
Hi Matt,
thanks for your reply!
In the alias section of our ecommerce platform (Demandware) we have set this redirect:
www.example.com --> HomeShow
When HomeShow solves in the locale pipeline (www.example.com/en/home or /it/home etc). Is Demandware that automatically assigns the right home page based on this method:
- If it is the first time you land on Example and you don't have our cookie, Demandware will set the locale based on your browser language and the country from your IP (we use the country just for the shipping, so in this case we just consider the language).
- If it is not the first time you see Example.com Demandware will use your cookie stored, using the previous language you set. I.e.: you land for your first time on example.com, you come from Paris, the language was FR but you decided to change in DE for some reason. Then the next time you land on the website you will find DE as language and France as shipping country.
HREFLANG
We use hreflang tag in the code, it works perfectly so if you look for results in specific countries you will always find just the right pages (i.e.: if you look in Google.de all the results are www.example.de/women/etc, same thing for UK, IT, ES). The problem is just associated to the old home page, www.example.com. And all the sitelinks are correct, in the right language.
This is the hreflang tag we have:
WHY AN AUTOMATICALLY REDIRECT INSTEAD OF A LANGUAGE PAGE
Because this is the logic we have adopted behind our ecommerce sites. We could potentially change this method to a splash page but the real problem is that in google.fr everything works perfectly!! It sounds absurd! In Google France we don't see www.example.com, we see the perfect snippet www.example.com/fr/home (if you write the exact query "example" (brand name), because if you look for hybrid keywords you will always find the right page in the right language).
So the problem is just that if you type the query "example" you only see the 301 page www.exmple.com as the first result instead of www.example.com/LOCALE/home.
I have found out that in Google Search Console, inside the internal link section, www.example.com is still in first position, with 37.000 links from different subdomains.
I think that, as Rand Fishkin replied to my email, maybe Google feels free to decide what results display even if there is a redirect 301 that has been set for months. This is the reason why in France everything is ok, but in Italy or Spain is not.
Matt, what do you think about this? Sorry for length of this post but I had to explain all the aspects.
Thanks in advance!
Davide
-
Sorry are you 301 redirecting www.example.com to www.example.com/es/home in Spain? Also when are you redirecting www.example/en/home?
There's a lot of questions here. First are you using href lang tags? Second, why did you decide to redirect instead of setting up a language page?
Moz themselves (https://mza.bundledseo.com/learn/seo/international-seo) recommend that site should not "automatically redirect a user to a different language based on location" and instead "show search engines which languages you're set up to handle using hreflang or language meta tags—bits of code that indicate which language(s) your content is available in."
Why did you decide on a redirect. Also why do you have home in the URL as well?
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How to Get google to get to index New URL and not the OLD url
Hi Team, We are undertaking a Domain migration activity to migrate our content frrom one domain to another. 1. the Redirection of pages is handeled at Reverse proxy level. 2. We do have 301 redirects put in place. However we still see that google is indexing pages with our Old domain apart from the pages from new domain. Is there a way for us to stop google from indexing our pages from Old domain. The recommendations to have Noindex on Page mete title and disallow does not work since our redirection is setup at RP and google crawlers always discover the new pages after redirection.
Local Website Optimization | | bhaskaran0 -
Google showing 3 different results for homepage
Hello All! First post in this community. I hope someone can help with an issue I'm having with my website, 3vdental.com. 1. When I Google my brand name, 3V Dental Associates, I see one result on the front page. This result shows ONLY my brand name as the title tag... See here: https://www.screencast.com/t/Vwq4l2Lrn 2. When I Google my domain name, 3vdental.com, I see a second result, that still only shows my brand name as the title tag, but with sitelinks showing in the results... See here: https://www.screencast.com/t/L37hxZ8rd1xp 3. Both results above are not ideal, as they are not displaying the correct title and meta tags set within the Yoast SEO plugin. Here's a front-end view of the site displaying the correct title and meta tags.. See here: https://www.screencast.com/t/CZS3CBja4m Is there any way to correct this so that Google displays my preferred tags when my website is displayed? Thanks for your help in advance!
Local Website Optimization | | Visionisto0 -
Improve my on-page SEO
Hello, I am a photographer based in the UK, I have recently increased my prices, so SEO has become more important then ever as I need to target additional cities and wedding venues. I am looking for suggestions on ways I can ethically improve my websites on-page SEO and regional landing pages. I am running out of ideas, so any suggestions would be welcome. Do you think search engines will see these regional pages as low quality spammy pages are they not advised! If so how can I target other cities with out paying for PPC. Home page Additional Issues Is the 404 server script any good? I also have an issue, with old deleted wordpress pages, redirecting them even though there are no redirects set up in SEO yoast. I am not sure the server script on the shared hosting for 404 errors is any good, does anyone have any experience with this. For example this page returns the 404 page, however the header status is 200. http://www.robertsail.co.uk/derby-wedding-photographers-2/ If I moved to a dedicated server would this help me out.
Local Website Optimization | | Roboto19701 -
Why has my site dropped to page 2?
I haven't been paying attention to my sites SERP for the past year, and only realized I've dropped to page 2 on a keyword search. Specifically, on Google.ca, searching the keywords "wedding invitations" My site, www.stephita.com, used to consistently rank in the top 3 links. While my competitors have leapfrogged me. 😞 I realized that my site wasn't "mobile-friendly", and had a few other issues like keyword stuffing, long meta descriptions and titles. I've fixed these issues "now", but wanted to know does this mean my site was severely penalized by the Panda/Penguin updates for the last few years? Does having a PR3 site mean anything? My competitors who our rank me on SERP, are all PR1 sites. Greatly appreciate any feedback you can give me! 🙂
Local Website Optimization | | TysonWong0 -
Multi-Country Multi-Language content website
Hi Community! I'm starting a website that is going to have content from various countries and in several languages. What is the best URL structure in this case? I was thinking of doing something like: english name of the plant, content in english, content for USA:
Local Website Optimization | | phiber
www.flowerpedia.com/flowers/red-roses spanish name of the plant, content in spanish, content for MX:
mx.flowerpedia.com/es/rosas/rosas-rojas english name of the plant, content in english, content for MX:
mx.flowerpedia.com/roses/red-roses
this content is not the same as flowerpedia/flowers/red-roses Content for Mexico would not exist in languages other than english and spanish. So for example:
mx.flowerpedia.com/jp/flowers/red-roses would not exist and it would redirect
to the english version:
mx.flowerpedia.com/flowers/red-roses What would be the best URL structure in this case?0 -
Joomla website optimization software or tools?
Hi there, I am running joomla based website for my transportation website "Limousine Service" I have question what kind of software or tools i can use to improve the SEO on my site?
Local Website Optimization | | GarySahota0 -
Local SEO: City & County Pages
I'm working on developing some local pages for an HVAC company. They cover two counties, so I was planning on having two county pages, then linking them to individual city pages to keep the menu simpler and not cluttering it up with a couple dozen city pages for people to slog through. Has anybody ever done county pages before for local SEO? Or at least seen them? Just curious to see if there's any real benefit overall for have separate county pages, or if I should just stick to city pages.
Local Website Optimization | | ChaseMG0 -
Search Result Discrepancy: Keyword "Dresses" shows international sites in the search results of Google.co.in.
Hi All, What would be the reason that Google shows international websites in the first page results while there are huge local players available. Eg: Dresses - Keyword that shows results with almost all the results from International websites whereas the local big players in the same category are not shown. This is not the case for other keywords like Women dresses, Clothing, Shoes etc., Is it a bug or any particular reasons? Thanks,
Local Website Optimization | | Myntra0