Google cache is showing the wrong URL with CCTLD's

[Ruudst]

Hi Folks,

At Lightspeed we decided to setup local websites with CCtld's. Momentarily we have issues with the Google cache. I'm not sure what's going wrong. For example if I check the Google cache of www.lightspeedhq.be in the Belgium Google it refers to www.lightspeedhq.nl. See link:

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:fm0XIZ8sEe8J:https://www.lightspeedhq.be/+&cd=2&hl=nl&ct=clnk&gl=be

We have the same problem for our www.lightspeedhq.co.uk website, which is referring to www.lightspeedhq.com:

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:OXdAIIFa7AYJ:https://www.lightspeedhq.co.uk/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=uk

Does Google sees it as duplicate content? Or don't we have to use 'Alternative Hreflang'? A week ago we changed our canonical links which were actually randomly referring from .be > .nl and .co.uk to .com.

What can we do now to make sure all is properly indexed?

Best,

Ruud

[Aleyda]

Hi Rudd,

You have answered yourself to your questions by giving the background of the issue (thanks for doing it too as this is key to identify these type of issues):

"A week ago we changed our canonical links which were actually randomly referring from .be > .nl and .co.uk to .com."

This was certainly the problem which is still causing this as a consequence today... as you were telling before to Google that the original versions of your Belgian pages were the Dutch ones, and the same with the UK version pointing to the .COM one, so Google did what you were specifying and that's the reason why it was showing these other pages in their cache instead of the Belgian and UK ones, because they were "their originals". This has nothing to do with hreflang... it had to do with the way you were configuring your canonicals and what it meant.

It's great that you already fixed your canonicals though The thing is that Google seems to not having yet updated the information... you will certainly give it a bit of more time if that just happened a week ago. My recommendation is that you should resubmit for recrawling your Belgian and UK versions via Google Search Console so Google recognizes your current configuration and not the old one... once they do it, they will correctly show the right content in the cache, as now you have your canonicals set to inform that they're the original versions of themselves.

Thanks,

Aleyda