GeoIP and redirects
-
I have been looking at an ecommerce site that uses a GeoIP module to take users to the relevant store, eg:
domain.com/uk domain.com/us
domain.com/euro
domain.com/rowAfter using the SEO Moz site crawler, the GeoIP module is using 302 redirects to take users to the relevant page. So, domain.com 302s to domain.com/uk and so on.
What is the impact of this in terms of SEO? Only the US version of the site was crawled by the site crawler, presumably because this was due to the US version of the site being shown based on the IP address. Links to the other stores are clearly placed in the header of the site but they weren't crawled.
Thanks in advance
-
Thanks for the replies. I created a sitemap for each store last week. I added the links to the robots.txt and also submitted them to Google.
The SEO Moz site crawler now crawls the full site content, but the pages are still recorded as 302 redirects.
The GWT figures are completely wrong where it displays the number of indexed pages..
-
Hi Edward,
I'm really not a fan of GeoIP detection - not because of cloaking - broadly speaking you're fine on that front.
That said I have seen sites that have clearly tripped some sort of cloaking filter and been penalised as a result; they were using GeoIP to deliver either US or UK content on the same page - rather than pushing to .com or .com/uk. But that's kind of off-topic
The potential issue of redirecting people based on GeoIP is that if you don't make your whole site crawlable for the search bots, they'll typically only be able to access and therefore crawl / index the US content (Google mostly crawls from a US IP).
As you can well imagine - if only your US content is accessible to the bots, then that's the only content that ever stands a chance of ranking.
Just an aside - I also don't like it from a UX perspective; just because I'm in the US right now doesn't necessarily mean I'd like to see US content.
As such I prefer to use GeoIP detection, then let the user decide which content they'd like to view. Cheapflights handle this pretty well - if you visit cheapflights.com from the UK you get 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=/ - you can then decide which content you'd like to see. Plus the bots can crawl both versions easily.
Hope this helps
Hannah
-
Google has never been 100% clear on how to address this specific issue since serving up different versions of a site depending on where the user is located is considered grey hat, but obviously it makes sense from a user's perspective to provide the most relevant content to them as possible. As you stated, the site crawler/search engines will only access the version of the site accessible to them depending on the IP address they are using at the time so that explains why only the US version of the site was crawled. If you changed the IP to one in the UK, then it would likely crawl that version of the site.
Anyways, I think the best route would be to set up a new sitemap for each version of the site and submit them in Google Webmaster Tools. I came across this blog post which did exactly this and it seemed to resolve their problems - http://www.stateofsearch.com/how-to-use-multiple-sitemaps-on-one-domain-for-geo-targeting/. Hope that helps!
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
-
International SEO : Redirecting spanish visitors to spanish site
Hi There, I have a problem I need an advice for. I run an e-commerce site in French. Things are going well. I also run the Spanish version of this site. We are starting to sell. But nothing like French site. I have traffic coming to the French site from Spain from visitors with Spanish language and they don't buy anything. That is strange as the conversion rate is good. Si I want to redirect them to the Spanish site. We sell phone parts. Our SEO is mainly based on brands, make, and reference numbers. So keywords are almost the same in both languages. Of course, site.es is aiming at google.es, and site.fr at google.fr So I am wondering. If I redirect these visitors to the Spanish site, Will it affect french site's SEO? Thanks
International SEO | | Kepass0 -
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 -
301 Redirect
Hi have an older word press site that ranks very well, and I have built a newer Magento site to replace it. I was originally planning on maintaining both of them.. But Im thinking I would like to shut down the older word press site completely. Is it possible to 301 the whole site at once to the new Magento site? And if so what is the quickest, easiest way to do it? The URL and category structure do not match in anyway.. thanks!
International SEO | | Shop-Sq0 -
If I redirect based on IP will Google still crawl my international sites if I implement Hreflang
We are setting up several international sites. Ideally, we wouldn't set up any redirects, but if we have to (for merchandising reasons etc) I'd like to assess what the next best option would be. A secondary option could be that we implement the redirects based on IP. However, Google then wouldn't be able to access the content for all the international sites (we're setting up 6 in total) and would only index the .com site. I'm wondering whether the Hreflang annotations would still allow Google to find the International sites? If not, that's a lot of content we are not fully benefiting from. Another option could be that we treat the Googlebot user agent differently, but this would probably be considered as cloaking by the G-Man. If there are any other options, please let me know.
International SEO | | Ben.JD0 -
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 -
CcTLDs 301 redirected to subfolders
My client has an international website and currently has a mixture of ccTLDs, subdomains, and subfolders for the country specific pages. We are trying to change this however they want to have ccTLDS because of the SEO benefit but 301 redirect them to subfolders because of the simplicity of management that subfolders provide. I believe that if they are really just working with subfolders, why don't they just use subfolders and use Google Webmaster Tools and XML Sitemaps to help Google understand each targeted country. My questions are: 1. Does having aht ccTLD example.ca 301 redirected to example.com/ca really benefit anything? 2. This client tends to spell out the name of the country even with country specific TLDs, and they can't change it, will this affect SEO? Ex: example.ca/canada. 3. What the best practice? example.ca/canada/en-ca/city or example.ca/canada/city/en-ca? Thanks!
International SEO | | nrv0 -
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 -
Intentional redirect for international visitors to a website
We are doing PPC for a new client, and using Clicktale to improve conversion rates. However, Clicktale won't work because the client does not want international visitors looking at their website (competitive reasons! - yeah don't get me started...). They have a redirect on for all international visitors which points to a "coming soon..." page Are there any SEO implications on traffic in their own country (they currently do rank for terms)? I'd like to go back with a strong case for them removing any international redirect. Thank You
International SEO | | CleverClicks0