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
-
Advise on the right way to block country specific users but not block Googlebot - and not be seen to be cloaking. Help please!
Hi, I am working on the SEO of an online gaming platform - a platform that can only be accessed by people in certain countries, where the games and content are legally allowed.
International SEO | | MarkCanning
Example: The games are not allowed in the USA, but they are allowed in Canada. Present Situation:
Presently when a user from the USA visits the site they get directed to a restricted location page with the following message: RESTRICTED LOCATION
Due to licensing restrictions, we can't currently offer our services in your location. We're working hard to expand our reach, so stay tuned for updates! Because USA visitors are blocked Google which primarily (but not always) crawls from the USA is also blocked, so the company webpages are not being crawled and indexed. Objective / What we want to achieve: The website will have multiple region and language locations. Some of these will exist as standalone websites and others will exist as folders on the domain. Examples below:
domain.com/en-ca [English Canada]
domain.com/fr-ca [french Canada]
domain.com/es-mx [spanish mexico]
domain.com/pt-br [portugese brazil]
domain.co.in/hi [hindi India] If a user from USA or another restricted location tries to access our site they should not have access but should get a restricted access message.
However we still want google to be able to access, crawl and index our pages. Can i suggest how do we do this without getting done for cloaking etc? Would this approach be ok? (please see below) We continue to work as the present situation is presently doing, showing visitors from the USA a restricted message.
However rather than redirecting these visitors to a restricted location page, we just black out the page and show them a floating message as if it were a model window.
While Googlebot would be allowed to visit and crawl the website. I have also read that it would be good to put paywall schema on each webpage to let Google know that we are not cloaking and its a restricted paid page. All public pages are accessible but only if the visitor is from a location that is not restricted Any feedback and direction that can be given would be greatly appreciated as i am new to this angle of SEO. Sincere thanks,0 -
301 redirection problem - Major lose of ranking in Google Search results
301 redirection problem - Major lose of ranking in Google Search results
International SEO | | AviramAdar
(site was almost completely removed from google search results) Hello,
I had a website ('DayUse' style) with the following url:
https://www.roomsindex.co.il/ Couple of days ago, I've made a 301 redirection to:
https://www.hour.co.il/ The redirection was made on 2 levels:
1. Server side- on htaccess file.
2. Google Search Console - Change of address page. Bare in mind the following things: The site's structure (url addresses) & the code hasn't changed (for sure). Both redirections are 100% valid (for sure). All the website pages were indexed (for sure). There isn't a penalty on any of the above domains (for sure). The website was almost completely removed from Google search results. For example: Before the redirection the website was ranked 10 in my main keyword "Rooms by hour" (translation from Hebrew), now the website removed. Also, the website removed from almost all the search terms it was ranked before. My question is, off course, WHY???
By the details on the following page, a proper 301 redirection shouldn't cause to such page ranking loss (As I mentioned- It almost completely disappeared)... https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6033049?utm_source=wnc_807001&utm_medium=gamma&utm_campaign=wnc_807001&utm_content=msg_914100&hl=en-IL search-console-change-of-address.png0 -
Redirection Question - Can Anyone Help?
Hi Community, I have 2 job boards. Job board A is a .co.uk domain. Job board B is uk.com domain. Job board A displays jobs in the UK but has an international jobs section. Job board B focuses entirely on international jobs. To cut a long story short we are shutting down Job board B as we are going to just be using Job board A in future. In terms of redirection, would it be best to: 1. 301 redirect job board B domain to Job board A. (www.jobboardb.uk.com -> www.jobboarda.co.uk) or 2. 301 redirect job board b to the international jobs section on job board a (as this is the most relevant place for the user to go I am thinking to go with option 2, but I read somewhere that it wasn't best practice. Any help is much appreciated.
International SEO | | SO_UK0 -
Hosting your website where you customers are located ?
Is it possible and recommended to host a website in Switzerland ending in.com to rank in the United States ? Or is it better to host it in the country you are targeting ? I know in WMT you can choose the country you want to target but is it as efficient as hosting it on a server located in the country ? Thanks,
International SEO | | seoanalytics0 -
Server location - Web Hosting
Does it matter where your web hosts servers are located? For example you're a UK based company and your web hosts servers are in Belgium. Does this effect rankings ?
International SEO | | Cocoonfxmedia0 -
Why would a site lose rankings in U.S while maintaining rankings in other English locations (Canada & Australia)
What would cause a site to lose ranking in the U.S while maintaining top (1st page) positions in other English results countries such as Canada or Australia? Is this purely penguin related because of location of backlinks or are there other significant factors that could be in play? Would this rule out Panda as a cause because it's simply an "English language" targeted algo and not location dependent like backlinks (penguin)? Appreciate any insights
International SEO | | ResumeGenius0 -
Keyphrase ranking a geo-redirected site in Google
Hi all This is the situation. I have a client who runs a number of ccTLD sites (all exact match brand name domains), including a .com which they use for the US. This is a hair care product and due to Advertising Standards Authority (UK) restrictions, they cannot use a certain phrase to promote their products - 'hair loss' on the domain.co.uk site. However, in the US, there is no such restriction and can use wording this on the site. A brand name search in google.co.uk brings up .co.uk as 1st result and .com as 2nd result, so the .com is indexed in google.co.uk. Any non-US user visiting domain.com will be redirected to their ccTLD site. Here's my question - could I feasibly get the domain.com site ranking in google.co.uk for certain 'hair loss' based keyphrases, considering the fact that I can mention it in the copy on there but not on the domain.co.uk site. Would I need to remove any Geographic Target in the WMT account for domain.com? Or is this a form of Google cloaking and could see the site penalised? Thanks
International SEO | | Coolpink0 -
How do you submit US based news on Google News US from the UK?
How do you go about submitting US news (based in the UK) to get indexed on Google News and show up in the US rather then the UK?
International SEO | | CameronT0