How well does Google's "Locale-aware crawling by Googlebot" work?
-
Hello,
In January of this year Google introduced "Locale-aware crawling by Googlebot."
https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6144055?hl=e
Google uses different crawl settings for sites that cannot have separate URLs for each locale. ......... This is basically for sites that dynamically render contend on the same URL depending on the locale and language (IP) of the visitor. If e.g. a visitor was coming from France, the targeted page would load in french. If a visitor was coming from the US the same page would load in English on the same URL.
Does anyone have any experience with this setup and how well it works?
How well do the different versions of a page get indexed, and how well do those pages rank?
In the example above, does the french content get indexed correctly?
Many thanks!
-
Many thanks! I was looking for examples of issues with this setup.
Some stakeholders find the dynamic solution appealing (as it is much easier to set up for us), thereby forgoing the opportunity to set up the site correctly for international indexing and ranking. I would like to be able to illustrate the potential shortcomings.
Many thanks again!
-
No personal experience with it - but seen already some cases on the Q&A where it generated problems. In one specific case all traffic outside Ireland was shown a default language page - inside Ireland the full content was available. None of the content was indexed by Google until the ip blocking was removed.
The note on the page you mention already gives a hint:
IMPORTANT: We continue to support and recommend using separate locale URL configurations and annotating them with rel=alternate hreflang annotations.
If your website has pages that return different content based on the perceived country or preferred language of the visitor (i.e., you have locale-adaptive pages), Google might not crawl, index, or rank all of your locale-adaptive content.
You can try it but you run a huge risk that your content will not be indexed or only partially indexed. Better to use the hreflang solution - as propose by Google.
Dirk
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
-
How To Proceed With Int'l Language Targeting if Subfolders Not An Option?
I’m currently working with my team to sort out the best way to build out the international versions of our website. Any advice on how to move forward is greatly appreciated! Current Setup: Subdirectories to target languages - i.e. domain.com/es/. We chose this because… We are targeting languages not countries Our product offering does not change from country to country Translated site content is almost identical to the english version Current Problem: Our site is built on WordPress and our database can’t handle the build out of 4 more international versions of the site. The database is slowing down and our site speed is being affected for multiple reasons (WordPress multilingual plugin being one of them). **What to do next? **My developers have said that we cannot continue with our current subdirectory structure due to the technical infrastructure issues I’ve mentioned above (as well as others I’m yet to get full details on). Now I’m left with a decision: Change to a subdomain structure Change to a ccTLD structure Is there an option 3? From what I’ve read it does not make sense to build out language targeted sites on a ccTLD structure because that limits the ability for people outside of the targeted country to find the content organically. I.e. a website at www.domain.es is targeted to searchers in Spain so someone in Columbia is less likely to find that content through the engines. Is this correct? If so, how much can it hurt organic discovery? What’s the optimal setup to move forward with in this case? Thanks!
International SEO | | UnbounceVan0 -
Geo-Targeting separate TLD's where both are .com domains
Hi I have a client who owns two separate TLDs for the same brand (for the sake of this post, we'll call the two sites www.site-a.com and www.site-b.com). For site www.site-a.com the website has been around for a while and is their primary site for their US operations which is their heartland, is well established in the SERPS and is where they make most of their money. As they looked to expand to the UK, they then created www.site-b.com and added the UK as a subfolder (so www.site-b.com/uk) and geo-targeted it towards the UK in Webmaster tools . The site has recently launched but they now find that, when a customer searches for their brand in the UK, they find www.site-a.com in position 1 (which, given it's tailored for a primary US audience, has a significantly lower conversion rate for UK traffic) and www.site-b.com in position 2. However, the client doesn't want to specifically geo target www.site-a.com to the USA as they feel it might affect where they appear for other international markets aside from the UK. So the question is, how can they, with the existing infrastructure, help remove www.site-a.com from the UK SERPs without adversely affecting their rank elsewhere? Hope this makes sense and thanks in advance for your help. James
International SEO | | jimmygs19820 -
How is Google determining location for geotargeting
Hello, I have a question related to Geotargeting.
International SEO | | Lvet
Let's suppose I have a website: mysite.co.uk
As far as I understand Google will consider this site targeted for the UK and will appear on searches preferentially from the UK. What happen now if I have a person located in Spain (with a Spanish IP) and searching in Google.co.uk. Will mysite.co.uk still appear in searches? What are the factors that Google takes into account for Geotargeting? Thank you0 -
Google Webmaster showing error for [hreflang='x-default']
Hi There! Using [hreflang='x-default'] tag to target language specific countries on our site but Google Webmaster showing errors even implementation made as per Google guideline but one thing is not clear and we are not sure, this is the reason behind it. Error is showing up only on those pages where 'Google Parameters' are used. For example : https://www.sitegeek.com/a2hosting?grank=open 'grank=' is defined as a 'Google Parameters' and on the above page 'hreflang' tags are : Also, on page https://www.sitegeek.com/a2hosting [without Google Parameters] same above 'hreflang' tags are taken. But, There is no error on second page URL where no 'Google Parameters' in URL. Therefore, error showing on first URL where 'Google Parameters' are taken. Is this the issue or not? suggest how to remove? -- Rajiv S9vhl3T
International SEO | | gamesecure0 -
How do you get the "real" organic traffic from direct traffic?
Please check the following article: http://www.searchenginejournal.com/study-shows-organic-search-responsible-64-web-traffic/111791/ I hope you guys have some ideas on how to extract the "real" organic traffic from direct. Thanks in advance!
International SEO | | zpm20140 -
Google adwords keyword tool - Can anyone recommend a free service that is similar?
Hi everyone, As many of you know the Google keyword tool is going away unless you have an active campaign. Can anyone recommend a tool that is similar and free? We do international SEO so it is really important for me to get keyword suggestions in several languages. Thanks Carla
International SEO | | Carla_Dawson0 -
Google UK picking up USA Site
I have a site with two subfolders one is .../uk and one is .../us Part of the content on the two sites is the same and part is unique. The US site's language is set to en and the UK site's language is set to en_gb. I have setup geo-targeting in webmaster tools. The problem is that the home page is a GEO-IP redirect and it seems to be picking up information from the US site even on google uk. I'm not concerned too much about getting the uk site crawled as we submit a sitemap for that anyway. But my concern is that if I setup the geo-ip redirect as a 301 will my UK site loose all of it's ranking? Also am I likely to be penalised for duplicate content?
International SEO | | matthewdolman0 -
Google US vs Google UK
I could have posted this somewhere else, but I cannot find it. So, I have keywords that rank well in Google US and many that do well in Google UK too. I thought all of my keywords ranking well in the US would also rank well the UK. I have figured out today that it is not the case. Why would I rank in the top 3 in the US and not even show up in the top 50 in the UK? It is very strange. Thanks for your help! I am not super new to SEO or web business. I have had a very good company that has been ranking well since 2004.
International SEO | | journeybeyondtravel0