Why does Google show the wrong currency for my online store?

[shornuk]

Looking for some suggestion on where else I can debug this. 

Store is set to GBP by default. Product schema shows all prices in GBP. Google's preview shows the price in GBP. However the result in Google search shows USD. 

https://hir.global/products/mothersage-cbd-lip-balm

https://search.google.com/test/rich-results/result/r%2Fproduct?id=y80pEG-oKucb3sihlp8qNg



Google's actual search results...

[ilanadavis]

The issue is that you are automatically changing the price displayed on the page based on the customer's IP address.

Google doesn’t want you to use IP location to automatically adapt your content.
"Do not use IP analysis to adapt your content. IP location analysis is difficult and generally not reliable. Furthermore, Google may not be able to crawl variations of your site properly. Most, but not all, Google crawls originate from the US, and we do not attempt to vary the location to detect site variations."

Notice the part that says "Google crawls originate from the US, and we do not attempt to vary the location to detect site variations." That means that because you are automatically detecting based on the user's IP address, Google will only ever see USD.

I wrote an article about this recently to help explain the issue.
https://www.ilanadavis.com/blogs/articles/the-multi-currency-seo-issue-plaguing-shopify-stores-but-n...

The proper solution is to turn off automatic IP detection and allow users to select the currency that they wish to use. It is OK and recommended to have a drop-down or link for the customer to change the currency, the problem is with the automatic IP-based switcher.

To solve the issue, do this:

1. Turn off automatic IP detection to allow users to select the currency that they wish to use, and
2. Use unique URLs (e.g. au.example.com or example.com/au or example.com/en-au) that Google can access for each currency you support. Look at Shopifys Market International Domains.

When both of those solutions are implemented, and assuming the current theme setup or apps you may have installed don't solve the problem on their own, you can install JSON-LD for SEO, and I can enable a feature that uses the cart currency. Using cart currency with the proper settings as outlined above, would allow you to show the correct price in the structured data based on the currency of the users which then comes from the international domain url. It would also allow you to qualify for Rich Results in more currencies based on that URL.

[shornuk]

Hi @ilanadavis ,

Thank you for your detailed response. I was assuming that this might have had something to do with it as it was the last thing that could possibly affect it. 

We use an app to do the automatic switching of the currency. This is partly down to the fact that the app allows us to set a different base price in a different market. I'm not sure that's possible using just Shopify? 

[shornuk]

I've just remembered some of the hurdles I had now that I'm looking a this again. 

So, Shopify Markets, won't allow you to set a different currency unless you use Shopify Payments. Unfortunately we can't use Shopify Payments, so this pretty much renders the whole Markets feature useless for us. 

Next, to clarify, Shopify has the Geolocation app that pops up the recommendation to switch to your localised store. Presumably it's OK to have this still, as a way to direct the US customer to the /en-us domain?

[ilanadavis]

Auto-detection of the IP is the cause of this. How you implement your tooling is up to you, but the popup is looking for their IP address. Since Google always comes from a US Based IP, you will continue to see this issue.

I believe some tools allow you to keep your GBP visually on the page, but the popup asks if they want to change the currency. Google will never interact with your page including your popup. So whatever is visually on the page is what Google's bots will see.

[shornuk]

OK. I think part of the issue is that when the Markets were enabled, it was set to use just the primary domain. So all pages exist just under the current primary domain. 

I guess the first step is to separate the domains, so the UK market will use the primary domain and the US market will use the '/en-us' subfolder domain. 

As Shopify adds the relevant hreflang tags, presumably it's safe to offer an option to change the currency on the US one then? 

[Vikas_Sharma]

Hello @ilanadavis 

Thank you for your response.

Actually my client is also having same issue for their website.

https://goddiva.co.uk/products/goddiva-cowl-neck-chiffon-maxi-dress-magenta

We are not using the auto currency switcher.

Why we are facing this issue?

Please suggest.

Thanks

[ilanadavis]

Hey @Vikas_Sharma 

You are using a currency converter and you are automatically detecting that I'm in the US just like Google. So the situation I've outlined above does apply.

I can see in the structured data that the currency is GBP and the price is $85, but that should be USD. This article outlines the issue when non-US based stores sell to US-based customers while automatically detecting the users IP address.

https://www.ilanadavis.com/blogs/articles/the-multi-currency-seo-issue-plaguing-shopify-stores-but-n...

To solve the issue, do this:

1. Turn off automatic IP detection to allow users to select the currency that they wish to use, and
2. Use unique URLs (e.g. au.example.com or example.com/au or example.com/en-au) that Google can access for each currency you support. Look at Shopifys Market International Domains.

When both of those solutions are implemented, and assuming the current theme setup and app doesn't solve the problem on their own, when you install JSON-LD for SEO, I can enable a feature that uses the cart currency. 

Make sure you have Shopify Markets and International Domains set up properly. When these are done correctly, you have a specific URL with a specific price that is targeted towards a market. So US might look something like goddiva.co.us and the UK would be your current URL.

If you're on Shopify Plus and have an old legacy setup, you may need to contact Shopify to have them turn off automatic IP detection.

As an aside, in the US, we don't have Duties or VAT so why would that be included for me.

[shornuk]

As @ilanadavis mentions. This does very much seem to be down to the currency switcher. 
I've done a lot of research and learning of this topic over the past few days. We removed subfolder-ing from the domains a short while ago. It was recommended by the SEO advisor as we had duplicate pages where the content changing was a price, so it seemed to make sense. 

Unfortunately, the knock on effect of this is the crawling. I can see from your listing screenshot, that Google is doing the exact same of your site as ours. It actually skips the product schema and grabs the value direct from the price section in the HTML.

[Farmacronicos]

I have the same issue, but I cant turn off market redirection, it is always turning on automatic again. Can you help?

[ilanadavis]

If you can't turn off the geolocation redirection, you'll need to contact Shopify or the app you're using to assist you.

[Farmacronicos]

Ok thanks Ilana,

Regards

[impaulintech]

Any update about this issue?