Geotargeting a folder in GWT & IP targeting
-
I am curently managing a .com that targets Canada and we will soon be launching a .com/us/ that will target the US. Once we launch the /us/ folder, we want to display the /us/ content to any US IP. My concern is that Google will then only index the /us/ content, as their IP is in the US.
So, if I set up .com and .com/us/ as two different sites in GWT, and geotarget each to the Country it is targeting, will this take care of the problem and ensure that Google indexes the .com for Canada, and the /us/ for the US?
Is there any alternative method (that does not include using the .ca domain)? I am concerned that Google would not be able to see the .com content if we are redirecting all US traffic to .com/us/.
Any examples of this online anywhere?
-
Geotargeting is not uncommon and the search engines are pretty good at negotiating sites using it, depends on your implimentation though.
We use geotargeting of users on our site to send users to /country/ based on their IP, with a few conditions.
-
Users are only redirected when coming to the homepage, either as direct or from search.
If a user from France is coming to the main dot com we'll send them to the /fr/ site automatically.
If the user tries to get to the homepage via a search engine we redirect them to the appropriate language site. This is because the main dot com often shows up above or near the /country/ sites in search, especially for brand terms.
If a user has been given a subpage for a search (e.g. site/cat/page/) then they won't be redirected as we assume the search engines have done a decent enough job at matching them to a page they want. -
Users/bots can override the routing.
Users can internally navigate to other languages through the language menu.
If we send somebody in France to the French site, but they only speak English, instantly forcing them back to the /fr/ site will just frustrate them.
Link to the other language sites on your pages and check referral headers, if internal do not redirect.
All language folders are specified in WMT and it definitely works.
So Google comes in to the dot com, in the header there is a link to the /us/, so they'll crawl down that link getting both versions of the sites in their index.
You biggest challenge here is getting the /us/ ranking above the dot com in the USA, which will require some creative link building
Make sense?
-
-
Hi Bobby,
What eBay used to do when you were reaching the www.ebay.com from Québec in Canada, it used to display a lightbox saying something like : "Hey, we have a french canadian version of our website, would you like to use it? Click here" and then you would be redirected to www.cafr.ebay.ca
So, my suggestion is, instead of using a 301 redirection to redirect the user to the appropriate geotargeted portion of the website, let him chose by showing him a friendly javascript lightbox.
As web spider won't be prompted the javascript lightbox, they will be able to crawl and index both version without problem.
Best regards,
Guillaume Voyer.
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
-
Issue with GA tracking and Native AMP
Hi everyone, We recently pushed a new version of our site (winefolly.com), which is completely AMP native on WordPress (using the official AMP for WordPress plugin). As part of the update, we also switched over to https. In hindsight we probably should have pushed the AMP version and HTTPS changes in separate updates. As a result of the update, the traffic in GA has dropped significantly despite the tracking code being added properly. I'm also having a hard time getting the previous views in GA working properly. The three views are: Sitewide (shop.winefolly.com and winefolly.com) Content only (winefolly.com) Shop only (shop.winefolly.com) The sitewide view seems to be working, though it's hard to know for sure, as the traffic seems pretty low (like 10 users at any given time) and I think that it's more that it's just picking up the shop traffic. The content only view shows maybe one or two users and often none at all. I tried a bunch of different filters to only track to the main sites content views, but in one instance the filter would work, then half an hour later it would revert to no traffic. The filter is set to custom > exclude > request uri with the following regex pattern: ^shop.winefolly.com$|^checkout.shopify.com$|/products/.|/account/.|/checkout/.|/collections/.|./orders/.|/cart|/account|/pages/.|/poll/.|/?mc_cid=.|/profile?.|/?u=.|/webstore/. Testing the filter it strips out anything not related to the main sites content, but when I save the filter and view the updated results, the changes aren't reflected. I did read that there is a delay in the filters being applied and only a subset of the available data is used, but I just want to be sure I'm adding the filters correctly. I also tried setting the filter to predefined, exclude host equal to shop.winefolly.com, but that didn't work either. The shop view seems to be working, but the tracking code is added via Shopify, so it makes sense that it would continue working as before. The first thing I noticed when I checked the views is that they were still set to http, so I updated the urls to https. I then checked the GA tracking code (which is added as a json object in the Analytics setting in the WordPress plugin. Unfortunately, while GA seems to be recording traffic, none of the GA validators seem to pickup the AMP tracking code (adding using the amp-analytics tag), despite the json being confirmed as valid by the plugin. This morning I decided to try a different approach and add the tracking code via Googles Tag Manager, as well as adding the new https domain to the Google Search Console, but alas no change. I spent the whole day yesterday reading every post I could on the topic, but was not able to find any a solution, so I'm really hoping someone on Moz will be able to shed some light as to what I'm doing wrong. Any suggestions or input would be very much appreciated. Cheers,
Technical SEO | | winefolly
Chris (on behalf of WineFolly.com)0 -
Geo ip filtering / Subdomain can't be crawled
My client has "load balancing" site traffic in the following way: domain: www.example.com traffic from US IP redirected to usa.example.com traffic from non-US IP redirected to www2.example.com The reason for doing this is that site contents on the www2 contains herbal medicine info banned by FDA."usa.example.com" is a "cleaned" site. Using HK IP, when I google an Eng keyword, I can see that www.example.com is indexed. When googling a Chi keyword, nothing is indexed - neither the domain or www2 subdomain. From Google Search Console, it shows a Dell Sonicwall geo ip filtering alert for www2 (Connection initiated from country: United States). GSC data also confirms that www2 has never been indexed by Google. Questions: Is geo ip filtering the very reason why www2 isn't indexed? What should I do in order to get www2 to be indexed? Thanks guys!
Technical SEO | | irene7890 -
Sub-domain or sub-folder for a blog?
Traditional thinking suggests sub-domains are treated as separate sites and so don't pass on link juice, but I've heard mixed opinions. I'm very much a believer in sub-folders but I'm interested to hear some other opinions. Thoughts?
Technical SEO | | underscorelive0 -
Why does GWT fine duplicate descriptions where none exist?
On my website, www.heartspm.com, I have been gradually changing over local information to remove near duplicate content. I created templates to create near duplicates for regions (coastal, inland, valley, etc. Then I also have been gradually creating unique pages for each city, such as Poway, Santa Monica, etc. Either way, I have this component of the website built on a list of cities with SEO information unique to each one pulling in template information. Now to my question: I am getting most of these pages coming up with GWT duplicate meta description information even though the descriptions are quite different between city to city. I am viewing the source page generated as well as the descriptions that are displayed by Google on the search engine. These descriptions do not appear to duplicate to me. So why the error?
Technical SEO | | GerryWeitz0 -
Should we use "and" or "&"?
Our client has an ampersand in their brand name. The logo has "&", their url is spelled out. I'm trying to get them to standardize the use of the name for directories/listings. Should we use "and" or "&"?
Technical SEO | | vernonmack0 -
IPs and Domains
If a domain loads on the domain and the IP is that a problem? So it loads on domain.com and 69.16.....com Thanks!
Technical SEO | | tylerfraser0 -
One Page - Targeting Multiple Low Searched Keywords.
Hi, First "Question" on SEOmoz, A client has requested me to have all the traffic going to the main/home page. In total its 25 Keywords and competition is pretty low, lets say "Builder In City", all the keywords are the sames except for the citys. "Builder In London" "Builder in Birmingham" Builder in Cardiff" .. and so on. Will it be ok and do-able to target 1 homepage with 25 keywords and expect decent results.
Technical SEO | | Prestige-SEO0 -
301 Redirect & Cloaking
HEllo~~~~ People. I have a question regarding on cloaking. I will be really greatful if you can help me with question. I have a site www.example.com and it is targeting for multi countries. So I use sub directories for targeting multi countries. e.g. www.example.com/us/ www.example.com/de/ www.example.com/hk/ ....... so on and on. Therefore, when people type www.example.com, I use IP delivery to send users to each coutries. Here is my question. I use 301 redirect for IP delivery, which means when user enter www.example.com, my site read user's IP and send them to right country site by 301 redirect. In this case, is there any possibility that Google considers it as cloaking? Please people.... share me some ideas and thoughs.
Technical SEO | | Artience0