Ancestry Dot…What?

Stefan Pioso | Director SEO @ AncestryApril 15, 2016

2

Who we are not…

AgendaI. Configuration & Considerations

II. Situation

III. Symptoms

IV. Root Causes

V. Solutions & Outcome

VI. Review Takeaways

VII. Questions

5

International Market Approach

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

The Situation

6

Canada homepage traffic dropped sharply!

7

8

So what changed?

• Site change - Nope

• Engine correlation - Google

• Known algo update/refresh - Nope

• Device type correlation - Nope

• SERP presentation change - $*#%

Observed Symptoms

9

10

Ancestry dot…WHAT?

11

Ancestry Dot…What?

Root Causes

12

13

They do speak with SEOs!

Serve the wrong language, suffer confusion.

14

Confusing signals force engines to guess.

15

CanadaUnited Kingdom

Solutions & Outcome

16

Short Term Title Fix

17

Href Lang Fix

18

Results

19

20

Key Takeaways

• Don’t make the engines guess

• Monitor your brand’s presence in SERPs

• Remember Google DOES talk to SEOs

Questions?

22

Stefan PiosoDirector, SEO @ Ancestry

Linkedin.com/in/spioso

Facebook.com/AncestryUS

spioso@ancestry.com

Leading Online Family History Resource

@ancestry

Appendix

Symptom 1: Title

24

Symptom 2: Sitelinks

25

Symptom 3: Cache

26