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Patrick Wagner, the Senior Search & Digital Analyst at TD Trust Canada, a major bank, posted in the Google Webmaster Help forums complaining that Google listed their mobile site in the desktop search results.
In short, if you search for [canada trust] in Google Canada, the first result shows www.tdcanadatrust.com/m/, which is the mobile URL.
Patrick asked why is it showing the mobile site instead of the standard home?
Google's John Mueller responded in the thread saying:
You're (probably accidentally) specifying this URL as your preferred version for Canada in your Sitemap file at http://www.tdcanadatrust.com/ sitemap-french.xml.
It is nice when big brands make these mistakes and talk about them in a public forum. We can all learn from it and it shows we are all human.
Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.
Comments:
lfaber
01/16/2014 01:49 pm
Good find. It's pretty scary when the last update to a sitemap was in June of 2013.
Alexander Hemedinger
01/16/2014 02:14 pm
Nice.
seoivan
01/16/2014 04:15 pm
Those guys rank #1 for car insurance in Canada, but if you look at their backlinks they are riding on authority + spam (bought links / networks / expired domains). Google seems to be OK with this, since they got a ton of authority behind their backs.
seoivan
01/16/2014 04:15 pm
Sorry the domain is: http://tdcarinsurance.com/
Jen
01/16/2014 06:13 pm
It's a bit sad that big companies like TD get preferential treatment when it comes to resolving technical issues with their sites and/or get a little slap on the wrist when they are caught doing things against Google's terms of service. At the end of the day, Google looks after its bottom line and companies like TD who spend big money in Adwords will never receive a lengthy penalty for spam. I guess the name of the game is to try take on big brands as clients, buy some links and they'll rank super well without a glitch.
seoivan
01/16/2014 09:22 pm
Yea feels bad to see them get away with this, while smaller guys get slapped. In a way this is bitching, but if you gonna slap websites, everyone should be slapped equally.
BitteredSiteOwner
01/16/2014 10:03 pm
Oh yeah that site you mentioned below was slapped, it's not even online. LOL
BitteredSiteOwner
01/16/2014 10:03 pm
Maybe try doing some DD before making claims next time. That site isn't even owned by TD. It's hosted in Germany and the owner has 400+ odd domains registered. ;) BTW, I hope you are not making the accusation because you are doing SEO in the same industry and being bitter it.
BitteredSiteOwner
01/16/2014 10:23 pm
Seems like Kanetix .ca can also get away from some bad links too.
seoivan
01/16/2014 10:24 pm
its #1 right now (google.ca) http://i872.photobucket.com/albums/ab282/ivannutr/carinsuranceGoogleSearch_zpsbc0b89ba.png unless they disavowed all the junk on the backend and did a reconsideration
BitteredSiteOwner
01/16/2014 10:27 pm
You mentioned tdcarinsurance.com...
seoivan
01/16/2014 10:30 pm
ohhh my bad, meant this one http://www.tdinsurance.com/ look at the backend, their ranking page for the term sits on pure link buys / network links
BitteredSiteOwner
01/16/2014 10:35 pm
Well, we all know how the insurance niche is like the wild west. I wouldn't be surprised if bad links are involved to rank. Though, having worked in the financial niche before, I can't imagine how the execs would risk their multi-billion dollar business with some shady SEO tactic. Links from sites of their other businesses, government agencies and regulators are enough to offset the bad links and give them good enough authority. If not otherwise, any competitors can basically spend a couple G to knock them out with fake bad links.
Gaurav Srivastava
01/17/2014 01:09 pm
One of the best thing of Google is that they always responds.