Geo targetting and SEO

[lhernandezBum]

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

[lhernandezBum]

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!

[mrdavidingram]

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