It seems like Google may be having issues indexing and ranking Ikea's international and localized web pages properly. Stefan Drab, who I think is from Ikea or at least does their SEO, said in a Google Webmaster Hangout at the 33 second mark that Google is having "issues with when it comes to indexing of URLs" of Ikea's international and localized sites.
Google's John Mueller confirmed the issues and said "it feels like something may be on our side." This means that Google is admitting that there is an issue on the Google end and not something Ikea did incorrectly.
Here is what Stefan Dab said:
We see at the moment a huge issues with when it comes to indexing of URLs. So for example for the brand IKEA in Germany at the moment. So when we are searching for IKEA kitchen in Germany and they're showing the Austrian version of the UL instead of the German version. And on the second place an old URL which is in PDF which is redirected. So we tried everything to fix this from technical sides of each of we were checking all redirect, sitemap.xml, href lang tag, robots.txt, check technical issues like how times regarding also CDN and so on but we haven't found any issues, technical side of content side. And also have no manual action in place, especially no other search engine showing this issue so it would be interesting to get your thoughts about this.
Here is how John Mueller responded:
I saw that question this morning and I had a chance to briefly look into it. And it feels like something may be on our side where we're kind of holding on to two particular URLs so I've passed that on to a team to double-check. I don't think there's anything particularly on your side that you're doing wrong. Sometimes with different country versions that show the same content. It's a bit confusing on our side but we should be able to to catch that better. Especially the I think the PDF example that you gave with the PDF URL. That's something that to me just looks like like something is stuck on our end.
Here is the video embed if you want to watch it - it is about two minutes long:
Here is the full question posted in the YouTube Community thread:
We see huge issues when it comes to indexation of correct URLs within Google at the moment. E.g.: For search term "IKEA Küche" (en:"IKEA kitchen") Google is showing on #1 the Austrian URL for kitchen (https://www.ikea.com/at/de/rooms/kitchen/) and on #2 an old IKEA URL which is a pdf of the former website (website relaunch early 2019). This URL (https://www.ikea.com/ms/de_DE/pdf/20112_lirs01a/Kissenbezug.pdf) is redirecting via 301 to the correct IKEA DE kitchen URL (https://www.ikea.com/de/de/rooms/kitchen/). All sitemaps are working correctly with correct href-lang tags, all redirects (301) are in place from the former website relaunch and also correct robots.txt files are in place.Within Search Console Google is telling us that the correct URL is not in the index --> " Duplicate, submitted URL not selected as canonical". Instead an old URL which is showing a 301 is ranking for "IKEA Küche" (URL:https://www.ikea.com/ms/de_DE/pdf/20112_lirs01a/Kissenbezug.pdf). For this old URL it tells us "Indexed, not submitted in sitemap" and the Google-selected canonical says: "Inspected URL". We have analyzed everything regarding robots.txt, sitemaps, href-lang, duplicate content, any technical issues like outtimes, CDN-issues and so on. Also no "manual action" is in place.
Plus: If content (e.g. meta-data) of the German IKEA DE kitchen URL is updated, Google is showing updated meta-data in SERPs, but is still showing the old URL which is redirecting via 301.
Forum discussion at YouTube Community.
