Redirecting users based on location
-
My site is available in EN, DE, SW, SP, FR, IT, CH and JP.
However, the EN sites ranks much better than the other languages, and even when searching in another language the EN homepage is normally the result that appears.
Would it be worthwhile to automatically redirect users to the site in the same language they are searching in or country they are searching from? If so, how do I go about this?
Thanks!
-
Thanks for your response!
May I ask how you achieved this? I have a client that wants to show different content based on US State Location.Thanks
-
Hi Sara,
The GEO-IP redirect isn't an approach I favour.
As Google normally crawl from a US IP it can cause indexation problems.
As such I prefer something like cheapflights.com implement - if you visit cheapflights.com from a UK IP you are pushed to this international choice page - http://www.cheapflights.com/workers/profile-select.aspx?sref=CFUK&redirect=GeoIP&geoip=GB&cfref=CFUS&spt=Home&rp=/
This allows user to select the appropriate site (nicer for users) and allows both versions to be crawled.
My recommendation would be to implement something like that rather than a hard redirect to a specific language version.
I hope this helps,
Hannah
-
I haven't redirected users by country, but I am doing it by US state for certain services on a site.
-
When a user visits the page from a state we offer the service in, they are 302 redirected to the state specific page
-
When a crawler visits the page, they are NOT redirected anywhere
-
On that same page, we have links pointing to the state specific page so they can be discovered by the crawler
-
-
Hi SaraSEO,
I don't think redirecting visitors based upon country is wise because of the following reasons:
- The Search Engine crawlers are not neccissarily located in the country they crawl for and might not be able to crawl all languages.
- Redirecting Users but not Crawlers could be considerd cloaking
- There might be German speaking people in sweden getting very annoyed not being able to see the german version. - Google explicitly advises not to do this:
"Make sure each language version is easily discoverable
Keep the content for each language on separate URLs. Don’t use cookies to show translated versions of the page. Consider cross-linking each language version of a page. That way, a French user who lands on the German version of your page can get to the right language version with a single click.
Avoid automatic redirection based on the user’s perceived language. These redirections could prevent users (and search engines) from viewing all the versions of your site."
source: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=182192&topic=2370587&ctx=topic
Greets,
Sven
-
I think the only option would be to either have separate sites / urls or - redirect user to the relevant version of the site when they first land on your site, by checking their geo location. Now, if you're using one site and redirect, then I'm presuming you're still using the same urls - it's just the content that changes accordingly based on the location.
It looks like international versions of Google services are hosted in specific countries as their IP address changes - try for instance google.ru, google.pl etc. and you'll see using the SEOMoz toolbar that the IP is different, but I'm not quite sure if crawlers are only coming from the main server or not. Perhaps someone else could answer this.
You can do redirection using two methods : Javascript or Server side technology. Depending on what server technology you're using there are several classes / scripts available out there. Here's an example of one for PHP : http://www.geoplugin.com/webservices/php
The HTML5 has a built in Geolocation API, which you can read more and see some examples of here : http://merged.ca/iphone/html5-geolocation
With HTML5 Geolocation you will always be first asked if you want to allow the site to use your location - this is something you cannot get rid of.
I hope this helps a bit.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
I am based in the UK. I want to appeal to a UK and US market. One of my keywords is 'generalised' which gets way more traffic in my keyword phrase when spelt with a z and not an s. What do I do?
Hi folks. I am based in the UK. I am about to launch a new blog, and I want to appeal to the UK and US markets. One of my primary keywords is 'generalised', which gets way more traffic (as seen using Moz's keyword tool) in my keyword phrase when spelt with a z and not an s. What do I do? Any guidance would be great. I note this has been discussed before, but seemingly without a conclusion. I would really appreciate any help you can provide.
International SEO | | Nobody16165422281340 -
GeoIP Redirects & hreflang
Hello, We believe we've had some issues with hreflang tags not remaining validated due to the implementation of geoIP redirects. Previously, if a user clicked a landing page on Google search that was not targeted for their territory, they would instantly be redirected to a sub path that targets their territory using geoIP redirects. We're planning to remove the initial geoIP redirects and have messaging that prompts the user to either stay on the page they've landed on, or be redirected to page that is right for their territory. However, if a user has selected to be redirected to a sub path that is targeted for their territory, they will have a cookie preference set for the IP location they've selected, and will continue to be redirected to their chosen sub path. My question is, will a crawler follow and trigger the geo preference cookie, which could potentially cause complexities in validating hreflang tags and ranking of content for the right market. Thanks.
International SEO | | SEONOW1230 -
International SEO : Redirecting spanish visitors to spanish site
Hi There, I have a problem I need an advice for. I run an e-commerce site in French. Things are going well. I also run the Spanish version of this site. We are starting to sell. But nothing like French site. I have traffic coming to the French site from Spain from visitors with Spanish language and they don't buy anything. That is strange as the conversion rate is good. Si I want to redirect them to the Spanish site. We sell phone parts. Our SEO is mainly based on brands, make, and reference numbers. So keywords are almost the same in both languages. Of course, site.es is aiming at google.es, and site.fr at google.fr So I am wondering. If I redirect these visitors to the Spanish site, Will it affect french site's SEO? Thanks
International SEO | | Kepass0 -
Change Lang. IP base, Browser Base or Manually?
Hello I would like to ask a question about multi lang/international Website. Which one is better for SEO? User in Different Countries automatically see The website in their Language? or User see the English version and can change the language manually?
International SEO | | Vahid-af0 -
If I redirect based on IP will Google still crawl my international sites if I implement Hreflang
We are setting up several international sites. Ideally, we wouldn't set up any redirects, but if we have to (for merchandising reasons etc) I'd like to assess what the next best option would be. A secondary option could be that we implement the redirects based on IP. However, Google then wouldn't be able to access the content for all the international sites (we're setting up 6 in total) and would only index the .com site. I'm wondering whether the Hreflang annotations would still allow Google to find the International sites? If not, that's a lot of content we are not fully benefiting from. Another option could be that we treat the Googlebot user agent differently, but this would probably be considered as cloaking by the G-Man. If there are any other options, please let me know.
International SEO | | Ben.JD0 -
URL Structure for Multilingual Site With Two Major Locations
We're working on a hotel site that has two major locations. Locations currently live in separate domains. The sites target users from around the world and offer content in multiple languages. The client is looking into migrating all content into one domain and creating sub-folders for each location. The sites are strong in organic search, but they want to expand the keyword portfolio to broader keywords regarding activities, which they also market on their sites. The goal is to scale their domain authority as they have a really strong brand. The question is which would be a preferred URL structure in case content is finally migrated into one domain? - (we have doubts about were the lang folder should be placed as each location has different amenities and services). Here is what we had in mind: domain.com – this is the homepage domain.com/location-1 – to target English visitors domain.com/location-2 – to target English visitors domain.com/es/location-1 – to target Spanish visitors domain.com/es/location-2 – to target Spanish visitors
International SEO | | burnseo0 -
CcTLDs 301 redirected to subfolders
My client has an international website and currently has a mixture of ccTLDs, subdomains, and subfolders for the country specific pages. We are trying to change this however they want to have ccTLDS because of the SEO benefit but 301 redirect them to subfolders because of the simplicity of management that subfolders provide. I believe that if they are really just working with subfolders, why don't they just use subfolders and use Google Webmaster Tools and XML Sitemaps to help Google understand each targeted country. My questions are: 1. Does having aht ccTLD example.ca 301 redirected to example.com/ca really benefit anything? 2. This client tends to spell out the name of the country even with country specific TLDs, and they can't change it, will this affect SEO? Ex: example.ca/canada. 3. What the best practice? example.ca/canada/en-ca/city or example.ca/canada/city/en-ca? Thanks!
International SEO | | nrv0 -
Poor Google.co.uk ranking for a UK based .net, but great Google.com
I run an extremely popular news & community website at http://www.onedirection.net, but we're having a few ranking issues in Google.co.uk. The site gets most of its traffic from the USA which isnt a bad thing - but for our key term "one direction", we currently don't rank at all on Google.co.uk. The site is located on a server based in Manchester, UK, and we used to rank very well earlier this year - fluttering about in position 5-7 most of the time. However earlier this year, around July, we started to fall down to page 2 or 3, and at the start of this month we don't rank at all for "one direction" on Google.co.uk. On Google.com however we're very strong, always on page one. We're definitely indexed on .co.uk, just not for main search term - which I find a bit frustrating. All the content on our site is unique, and we write 2-4 stories every day. We have an active forum too, so a lot of our content is user-generated. We've never had any "unnatural link building" messages in Webmaster Tools, and our link profile looks fine to me. Do we just need more .co.uk links, or are we being penalised for something? (I can't imagine what though). It certainly seems that way though. Another site, "www.onedirection.co.uk" which is never updated and has a blatant ad for something completely unrelated on its homepage, ranks above us at the moment- which I find quite frankly appalling as our site is pretty much regarded as the worlds most popular One Direction news and fan site. We've spent the last few months improving the page-load times of our site, and we've reduced any unneccesary internal linking on the site. Approx 2 months ago we launched a new forum on the site, 301'ing all the old forum links to the new one, so that could have had an impact on rankings - but we'd expect to see an impact on Google.com as well if this was an issue. We definitely feel that we should be ranking higher on Google.co.uk. Does anyone have any ideas what the iproblems could be? Cheers, Chris.
International SEO | | PixelKicks0