Internationalization and 302 redirects
-
Hi,
We're thinking in an internationalization process for a travel webpage. We'd like to use one domain (.com) in TV and press marketing and have several domains with each country ccTLD domain.
We've shown that for example Tripadvisor makes a 302 redirect if you connect to tripadvisor.com and you are in another country. But we've detected aswell, that if you use the Browser Agent Google Bot, it didn't.
It appears to be a cloaking, but really they're redirecting the users to the best places for them, and detecting Googlebot for not make the redirect, they ensures that it indexes well all the place. Booking.com makes something similar but with the same domain, detecting if you're Googlebot or not.
Do you think that this is a danger thing if you're not as big as Tripadvisor? They makes this redirection by level server, could be safest to do with javascript? if we do with javascript, Google will take this path instead of read the page?
Thanks!
-
Thanks to both for your responses.
I don't think that search engines shouldn't see this like a manipulative action, but maybe they do and we'll be banned.
Thomas, I couldn't use a GeoDNS because I think that GoogleBot always come from an US IP, so it will only index and rack our US domain. This is the reason for try to identify GoogleBot and don't make the redirect, I Google had a spider with an IP of each country we shouldn't have this problem, but think that this isn't suceed.
We'll use ccTLD for each one, so Webmaster Tools assign the country automatically.
Best regards,
Robert
-
Hi Robert,
Whilst what you're proposing could be considered cloaking, my understanding is that the search engines don't see this as manipulative and you should be fine.
However it's impossible to offer any guarantees - implementing this could cause you problems.
For what it's worth I really don't advocate the use of IP redirects - they can cause problems with indexation for example if you inadvertently end up redirecting GoogleBot (which normally crawls from the US) you can render any non-US content invisible. Furthermore I don't think it's necessarily great for users either.
For example, they may just be away in US, but actually want to see UK content. There are also various pecularities which make IP detection less reliable (for example if you're using WiFi with a major train network in the UK you actually come via a German IP).
Rather than doing a hard redirect I prefer Amazon's approach - if you visit Amazon.com from a UK IP you'll see a message which says: "Shopping from the UK? Visit Amazon.co.uk.". That way the user gets to decide for themselves which content they'd rather see.
I hope this helps,
Hannah
-
I thought this might help as well
ultraDNS or neustar I feel is not as good of a value in comparison to DynECT however in this particular case where you're trying to serve information to specified countries that will be speaking different languages and you will not want to use cookies or Java when doing it I would utilize a system like this as it is specifically designed for what you're doing. I can tell you from using this company in the past for my DNS needs ( again I primarily use DynECT and prefer it) that neustar in this instance may be a better fit because of its much larger offering into Internet marketing especially the fact that every other DNS manufacturer but I have ever heard of and I do research DNS quite a bit use one company for geo-DNS other than neustar
http://www.neustar.biz/enterprise/resources/digital-marketing/localized-advertising-report
& PDF with more
http://www.neustar.biz/enterprise/docs/product-literature/ip-intelligence/localize-web-content.pdf
also some highlights on the best way to go when building a international website
http://foliovision.com/2009/10/seo-expert-training-london#handle-multiple-countries
hope this helps,
Thomas
-
you are currently using different TLD's in order to optimize for each country correct?
If so Google bot needs to be told in Webmaster tools when setting up each new TLD which country to target.
If you do not do this and you are using a JavaScript switch in order to target different countries you will most likely end up with Google bot doing what it's doing targeting your first domain
if you are thinking about cloaking I would strongly advise against it it will only hurt you in your efforts to get ranked.
I would not use JavaScript to do this I would use DNS and the CDN's
for instance I would use DynECT they have excellent geo-DNS and have been doing this for a long time.
Please look at
http://dyn.com/dns/dynect-managed-dns/advanced-feature-geo-traffic-management/
Check out
http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/mozcon-international-seo/
http://www.stateofsearch.com/geotargeting-tlds-sub-folders-sub-domains/
&
http://www.slideshare.net/HannahBoBanna/international-seo-be-wizard-2011
I hope this helps,
Thomas
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
-
Important pages are being 302 redirected, then 301 redirected to support language versions. Is this affecting negatively the linking juice distribution of our domain?
Hi mozzers, Prior to my arrival, in order to support and better serve the international locations and offering multiple language versions of the same content the company decided to restructure its URLs focused on locale urls. We went from
International SEO | | Ty1986
https://example.com/subfolder to https://example.com/us/en-us/new-subfolder (US)
https://example.com/ca/en-us/new-subfolder (CAN)
https://example.com/ca/fr-ca/new-subfolder (CAN)
https://example.com/de/en-us/new-subfolder (Ger)
https://example.com/de/de-de/new-subfolder (Ger) This had implications on redirecting old URLs to new ones. All important URLs such as https://example.com/subfolder were
302 redirected to https://example.com/us/en-us/subfolder and then 301 redirected to the final URL. According to the devs: If you change the translation to the page or locale, then a 302 needs to happen so you see the same version of the page in German or French, then a 301 redirect happens from the legacy URL to the new version. If the 302 redirect was skipped, then you would only be able to one version/language of that page.
For instance:
http://example.com/subfolder/state/city --> 301 redirect to {LEGACY URL]
https://example.com/subfolder/state/city --> 302 redirect to
https://example.com/en-us/subfolder/state/city --> 301 redirect to
https://example.com/us/en-us/new-subfolder/city-state [NEW URL] I am wondering if these 302s are hurting our link juice distribution or that is completely fine since they all end up as a 301 redirect? Thanks.1 -
Redirected traffic and SEO problem
Hi all, I have a bit of a search engine predicament and I can't find the answer anywhere. It's a bit of a complicated one so please bear with me 🙂 ... I'm a Freelance Copywriter, I recently started the business, I've also recently moved to New Zealand. As such I'm looking for business back in the U.K. (As that's where my network is), but also locally, in NZ. I've purchased both the .co.uk and .co.nz domain names (http://www.inspirecontent.co.uk and http://www.inspirecontent.co.nz) The way that the domain provider / host has set these up is for one to redirect to another. Currently if someone visits www.inspirecontent.co.nz it redirects to the U.K. Site. That's less than ideal for me, because I dont want NZ traffic (i.e potential leads) to think I'm a U.K. Based business. my questions are as follows: 1. Will the redirect to the U.K. domain prevent me from appearing in NZ search (I.e if someone searches via google.co.nz) I'm really struggling to rank at the moment, I'm working on more content but if the redirect is a problem then I need to know about it so that I can find a work around. 2. Any suggestions on the best approach to the work around? It would be great if the URLs didn't change! So that you wind up from the U.K. on the U.K site, and if you're from NZ, you land on and stay on the NZ domain, but I'm not sure how to achieve that. One option, I think, would be to have two different websites, hosted separately, but I hear that duplicated content is bad for SEO? Thanks all in advance Kind regards
International SEO | | Andrea_howey0 -
Internationalization guides for subfolder structure
I'm wondering if there are any guides out there that list how subfolders should be structured for Internationalization? The first language/location that I'm targeting is Portuguese in Brazil so should my folder structure be: www.example.com/br/pt/ or www.example.com/pt-br/ I did find the guide below but was wondering if there was perhaps anything from Google? http://www.lingoes.net/en/translator/langcode.htm
International SEO | | Brando160 -
Shall I automatically redirect international visitors from www.domain.com to e.g. www.domain.com/es? What is best SEO practice?
We have chosen the one domain approach with our international site having different language versions in subdirectory of main domain:
International SEO | | lcourse
www.domain.com/es
www.domain.com/it
etc. What is SEO-wise best practice for implementing international index pages. I see following options: entering www.domain.com will display without redirection the index page in language of user (e.g based on IP or browser) in www.domain.com
Example: www.booking.com entering www.domain.com will always show English index page.
Additionally one may display a message in the header if IP from other country with link to other language version.
Example: www.apple.com entering www.domain.com will always redirect automatically to country specific subdirectory based on IP
Example: www.samsung.com Any thoughts/suggestions on what may be best solution from a SEO perspective? For a user I believe options 1) & 3) are preferable.0 -
301 redirect .com to .nl
Hi guys, We have two job websites: one international job website (.com, PR5) and one Dutch job website (.nl, PR0). We have decided to focus on our Dutch job website and want to 301 redirect the international website to the Dutch website. Will this give us the boost we are hoping for on the Dutch site? Or does a .com redirect to .nl work different than a .nl to .nl redirect for example. We're hoping that the international juice will boost our Dutch website of course. Looking forward to your thoughts!
International SEO | | rodjer0 -
Does 301 redirect on homepage impact seo strongness of this page
Hi, we are running a multilingual website with this structure : http://www.website.com/en
International SEO | | Samuraiz
http://www.website.com/fr
http://www.website.com/de
http://www.website.com/lang (etc.) with then all onsite URLs this way:
http://www.website.com/en/hello
http://www.website.com/fr/bonjour
http://www.website.com/it/ciao We have a 301 redirect on http://www.website.com going to http://www.website.com/en - except if a user already went on the website and chose a specific language. My question is : Do you think the english homepage will have more seo power if it goes directly to http://www.website.com/ I wonder if we lose some linkjuice with the 301 redirection, as many backlink goes directly to http://www.website.com1 -
What is the best way to make country specific IP redirect for only product pricng pages?
My website has 3 services and its price will be different for US/EU/Developed world and Asian/African countries.Apart from pricing page, all other things remain same. I want to use IP based redirect .I heard this thing is called cloaking and used by black-hat guys. What kind of instructions should I give to my web developer to look best to Google/Search bots and correctly show visitors the intended prices.Is there any caution to be taken care of. Thanks for your time
International SEO | | RyanSat0 -
Internationalization and SEO
Hi Everyone, This is my first post in this new Q & A section!! This interface looks great!! Now onto the question.... We have www.example.com in English that has 50,000+ URLs. We are in the process of building a new site example.de targeting German users. The German site (www.example.de) will be a mirror of the English site at launch as we want to give a full experience to people visiting the .de domain. However, not all pages will be localized as we can't support that. We are planning on localizing the core sets of pages (~500) and leaving the rest in English. Post launch, we will have additional milestones to localize the remaining pages until the entire site is localized (converted to German). Is this the correct way to go? Will this cause duplicate content issue?
International SEO | | Amjath
Will adding "rel=canonical" tag on these pages solve the purpose? Thanks for the help!0