Geo targetting and SEO
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Hi all!
We are about to launch a new geotargetting feature on our site.Basically, nowadays we have a normal Homepage (example: myHomepage.com). Next week, the homepage will depend on your localization (checked through IP):
For example, for Texans there will be a myHomepage.com/Texas (automatically redirected), for New Yorkers a myHomepage.com/Newyork.
My question is, how can this affect SEO? Where will the bot go?
Hopefully the answer is not "depending on where the bot is hosted"... because this can be dangerous. Also, I don't think that "telling the bot to go to a generic Homepage" is a good idea, as Google dislikes when you show them something different from the human users.
Thanks
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Thanks David!
I will check that case study. I guess that, right now, it's a matter of checking Google's cache after the new page gets crawled...
Still looking for different POVs everyone!
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Hi Alejandro,
Yep, it's the answer you don't want to hear...
The search bot will follow the same rules as everyone else, so if you geo-target dependent on location then Google will only see the content aimed at the bot location. And as you said, it's a very risky tactic to direct Google bot under different rules than users.
There was a perfect case study on such issues here on SeoMoz, you might not come up with the same answer as Paul but you need to look at the same considerations:
http://www.seomoz.org/ugc/territory-sensitive-international-seo-a-case-study
Good luck!
David
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