Google Search Console (GSC) - Geo-target one subdirectory

Question

I have an international website with gTLD xyz.com and different subdirectories for countries: xyz.com/fr/ for France, xyz.com/de/ for Germany, xyz.com/us/ for US and xyz.com/uk/ for UK.

I need US users to see search results coming from xyz.com/us/ and UK users from xyz.com/uk/. However, I also have traffic on my English pages coming from all over the world.

Should I use Google Search Console to simply geo-target xyz.com/us/ in the US and xyz.com/uk/ in the UK?

Or should I geo-target only xyz.com/uk/ in the UK, so UK users see primarily results from xyz.com/uk/, but leaving xyz.com/us/ "un-targeted", so all English speaking users, including US users, will see primarily results from xyz.com/us/?

Answer 1

Good question.

Google considers several signals for above situation to return the appropriate result.

What you have indicated is looks good to me:

Google uses hreflang tags to match the user's language preference to the right variation of your pages.

https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en

You may also plan to build authority for an individual country site from that country website etc.

Answer 2

I concur with TopQnA's response- hreflang tags signal and try to honor the user's language preference. On a related note, have you considered different websites for different locations? eg xyz.fr, xyz.de? I am seeing more cc TLDs now show up for queries where language is local (just an observation- no data to support)

ccTLDs might make it easier to target and analyze traffic.