Ancestry asked to speak at the Adobe Experience Manager (SIG) Community event in April 2016. These slides outline an issue Ancestry encountered related to international targeting.

1. Ancestry Dot…What?
Stefan Pioso | Director SEO @ Ancestry
April 15, 2016

2. 2

3. Who we are not…

4. Agenda
I. Configuration & Considerations
II. Situation
III. Symptoms
IV. Root Causes
V. Solutions & Outcome
VI. Review Takeaways
VII.Questions

5. International Market Approach
5“…A country code top-level domain (ccTLD) is an Internet top-level domain generally used or reserved for a country…” Wikipedia.org

6. The Situation
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7. Canada homepage traffic dropped sharply!
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8. So what changed?
• Site change - Nope
• Engine correlation - Google
• Known algo update/refresh - Nope
• Device type correlation - Nope
• SERP presentation change - $*#%
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9. Observed Symptoms
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10. 10
Ancestry dot…WHAT?

11. 11
Ancestry Dot…What?

12. Root Causes
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13. 13
They do speak with SEOs!

14. Serve the wrong language, suffer confusion.
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15. Confusing signals force engines to guess.
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CanadaUnited Kingdom

16. Solutions & Outcome
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17. Short Term Title Fix
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18. Href Lang Fix
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19. Results
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20. Key Takeaways
• Don’t make the engines guess
• Monitor your brand’s presence in SERPs
• Remember Google DOES talk to SEOs
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21. Questions?

22. Stefan Pioso
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Director, SEO @ Ancestry
Linkedin.com/in/spioso
Facebook.com/AncestryUS
spioso@ancestry.com
Leading Online Family History Resource
@ancestry

23. Appendix

24. Symptom 1: Title
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25. Symptom 2: Sitelinks
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26. Symptom 3: Cache
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