An SEO professional asked John Mueller during a hangout about their English homepage version with regards to ranking.
Their main question was: Why would the English homepage version rank higher than another language version of the homepage in a country of that language?
John answered that it’s always hard to say why this would rank higher.
But it definitely can. When it comes to different language versions, if you’re searching for a word or term that is ambiguous regarding its language, then it’s possible that Google will pick one language version or another language version. Also, different country versions, it’s the same thing.
And this is probably primarily true on home pages where, when people are searching for your company name, it’s not necessarily clear that they mean the English language version, the French version, or the German version just based on the query itself.
This is something where sometimes Google would show whatever they think best matches a query.
And this might not be the right language or country version.
John recommends doing two things.
- With hreflang annotations, you can tell Google about the different language and country versions, and then it’s easier for Google to swap these out.
- The other thing, especially for different country versions, which is usually where the homepage problem comes into play – you can use something like a JavaScript interstitial or a banner on a page to guide people to the right version of the page. If you can recognize that the user is in a country where you have a specific country version, and they’re on a different country version, then using a JavaScript banner is a good way to let them know that “Hey, it looks like you’re from this country and we have a country version for you here, perhaps you would rather go there.”
The important part of this is that by having a JavaScript banner, it tends to not get indexed. And by having it as something that the user can click on, this doesn’t redirect the user there automatically.
And that means that it’s easier for Google’s systems to actually process and index these pages.
This happens at approximately the 23:08 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
John (Submitted Question) 23:08
Why would an English version of a website homepage rank higher than another language version of the homepage in a country of that language?
John (Answer) 23:19
So it’s always hard to kind of say like, why would it rank higher, but it definitely can. And when it comes to different language versions, if you’re searching for a word, or a term that is essentially ambiguous with regards to its language, then it can happen that we pick one language version or another language version, or different country versions, it is the same thing. And this is probably primarily true on home pages, where when people are searching for your company name, it’s not necessarily clear that they mean the English language version, or maybe a French language version or German language version of your homepage just from the query itself.
So that’s something where sometimes we would show maybe, whatever we think best matches a query, and that might not be the right language or country version. Our recommendations here are, there are two things that you can do. On the one hand with the hreflang annotations, you can tell us about the different language and country versions, and then it’s easier for us to swap those out. The other thing, especially for different country versions, which is usually where the homepage problem kind of comes into play, you can use something like a JavaScript interstitial or a banner on a page to guide people to the right, right version of the page.
So if you can recognize that the user is in a country where you have a specific country version, and they’re on a different country version, then using a JavaScript banner is a good way to let them know that hey, it looks like you’re from this country and we have a country version for you here, maybe you would like to go there. The important part with this is that by having a JavaScript banner, it tends not to get indexed. And by having it as something that the user can click on, it doesn’t kind of redirect the user there automatically. Which means it’s easier for our systems to actually process and index these pages.
