Google shows URLs for other countries when searching for my site by country

Question

I have a site that's available for different countries and the URL looks like: www.example.com/country

The problem appears when I look for my site and I want to look for a specific country. For example I want to search for France, so I Google "my site France". The first result is example.com/france, that's fine but then the second or third result is example.com/other_country and that's not correct and on the first result if it shows sections of my site, it shows for example the contact section as example.com/germany/contactus

The problem is that looking for a specific country it shows content designed for other countries.

Answer 1

Use rel="alternate" hreflang="x" to tell Google which pages are for which locales.

In the head of every page which is duplicated for multiple locales, list the alternate pages with the relevant hreflang set:

<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="http://example.com/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="de" href="http://example.com/germany" />

Answer 2

Google is doing the right thing. It's actually doing what is in its program. I would better say change your website architecture by using geoIP:

Check that you have the mod_geoip module (GeoIP Extension) installed on your server.

Then, tweak your .htaccess file accordingly :

GeoIPEnable On
GeoIPDBFile /path/to/GeoIP.dat

# Start Redirecting countries

# Canada
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{ENV:GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE} ^CA$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://ca.abcd.com$1 [L]

# India
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{ENV:GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE} ^IN$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://in.abcd.com$1 [L]

# etc etc etc...