Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
301 Redirect & Cloaking
-
HEllo~~~~ People.
I have a question regarding on cloaking.
I will be really greatful if you can help me with question.
I have a site www.example.com and it is targeting for multi countries.
So I use sub directories for targeting multi countries.
e.g. www.example.com/us/
www.example.com/hk/ ....... so on and on.
Therefore, when people type www.example.com, I use IP delivery to send users to each coutries.
Here is my question.
I use 301 redirect for IP delivery, which means when user enter www.example.com,
my site read user's IP and send them to right country site by 301 redirect.
In this case, is there any possibility that Google considers it as cloaking?
Please people.... share me some ideas and thoughs.
-
Artience Girl, the information shared by Shane, Aaron and Lewis is correct.
Google wants to see the same page as it would be shown to a user under the same circumstances. If Google is crawling your page from San Jose California, then they want to see what a user from San Jose would see. If they decide to later crawl your site from their center in London, they want to see your site as it would be seen by a London user. The geo-targeting redirects you are presently doing are fine.
If you were to write any code which says to always show the Google crawler the US version of your site, then that tactic would be defined as cloaking. Any time you write code to specifically identify a crawler and show it different content, then you are cloaking.
It seems you are a bit uncomfortable with the answers so let me set you at ease by sharing a Matt Cutts response to your question: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFf1gwr6HJw
-
Hi Shane Thomas.
Thanks for your feedback.
Actually contents is not exactly same, but alot similar. Because I sell different products for different countries.
For example, I sell 30 products for US but only 10 products for UK. In this case, my UK site has only pages for 10 products. Of course, contents lay out and products are similar.
In this case, should I worry about cloaking?
Also, how search engine can see "intent is not deceptive or not"?
I always wondering about that. ^^
-
Hello, Lewis-SEO. Thanks for your reply, but I am not totally following your answer.
What do you mean by "Google only version of the site"?
You mentioned as follow.
"You will therefore need to decide which regional variation you want Google to end up at when it tries to visit/crawl the www.example.com URL"
Is this meaning that I should set "user agent redirection" for Google bot to send it to particular regional site? e.g. send Google bot to only www.example.com/us/ no matter which country IP address Google bot has?
Please correct me, if I am wrong. But this sounds more cloacking to me.
Google bot with DE IP address should redirect to www.example.com/de/ so google bot can crawl right contents. And when Google bot with UK IP addres should redirect to www.example.com/uk/.
I think if I send alll Google bot to www.example.com/us/ for example, it will confuse google bot more.
Could you please be more specific regarding your answer? PLEASE ~~~
-
Hi Artience Girl
The Google Webmaster guidelines covers topics like these but a key point is that geotargetting using IP address is fine as long as you are not showing Google a separate Google only version of the site. This would be considered cloaking.
You will therefore need to decide which regional variation you want Google to end up at when it tries to visit/crawl the www.example.com URL
But before you do that check the Google Webmaster guidelines in and around this area as if you follow them you are less likely to end up on the wrong side of them.
Hope this helps.
-
This really does not fit the description of cloaking, the content is the same, just different languages right?
If this is the case IMO this would not bee seen as cloaking as your are not delivering different content, just user experience.
Also as long as you are not separating IP delivery by source (meaning sending spiders somewhere different than humans) this would not be the definition of cloaking.
WIKI:
One use of IP delivery is to determine the requestor's location, and deliver content specifically written for that country. This isn't necessarily cloaking. For instance, Google uses IP delivery for AdWords and AdSense advertising programs to target users in different geographic locations.
As of 2006, many sites have taken up IP delivery to personalise content for their regular customers. Many of the top 1000 sites, including sites like Amazon (amazon.com), actively use IP delivery. None of these have been banned from search engines **as their intent is not deceptive. ** Keyword here..... Deceptive
-
I don't think this would come across as cloaking at all. It's a fairly common practice.
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
-
Help Setting Up 301 Redirects from Coldfusion Site to Wordpress Site.
I have created a new website and need to redirect all of the previous pages to the new one. The old website was built in coldfusion and the new site is built in wordpress. One of the pages I'm trying to redirect is www.norriseal.com/products.cfm to http://norrisealwellmark.com/products/. This is what I have in my .htaccess file <ifmodule mod_rewrite.c="">Options +FollowSymlinks
Technical SEO | | MarketHubb
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
Redirect 301 /products.cfm http://norrisealwellmark.com/products/</ifmodule> The result of this redirect is http://norrisealwellmark.com/products.cfm How do I prevent the .cfm from appending to the destination URL?1 -
301 redirect: canonical or non canonical?
Hi, Newbie alert! I need to set up 301 redirects for changed URLs on a database driven site that is to be redeveloped shortly. The current site uses canonical header tags. The new site will also use canonical tags. Should the 301 redirects map the canonical URL on the old site to the corresponding canonical for the new design . . . or should they map the non canonical database URLs old and new? Given that the purpose of canonicals is to indicate our preferred URL, then my guess is that's what I should use. However, how can I be sure that Google (for example) has indexed the canonical in every case? Thx in anticipation.
Technical SEO | | ztalk1120 -
301 redirect relative or absolute path?
Hello everyone, Recently we've changed the URL structure on our website, and of course we had to 301 redirect the old urls to the coresponding new ones. The way the technical guys did this is: "http://www.domain.com/old-url.html" 301 redirect to "/new-url.html"
Technical SEO | | Silviu
meaning as a relative redirect path, not an absolute one like this:
"http://www.domain.com/old-url.html" 301 redirect to "http://www.domain.com/new-url.html" This happened for few thousands urls, and the fact is the organic traffic dropped for those pages after this change. (no other changes were made on these pages and the new urls are as seo friendly as possible, A grade on On-Page Grader). The question is: does the relative redirect negatively affects seo, or it counts the same as an absolute path redirect? Thanks,
S.0 -
CNAME vs 301 redirect
Hi all, Recently I created a website for a new client and my next job is trying to get them higher in Google. I added them in OSE and noticed some strange backlinks. To my surprise the client has about 20 domain names. All automatically poiting to (showing) the same new mainsite now. www.maindomain.nl www.maindomain.be
Technical SEO | | Houdoe
www.maindomain.eu
www.maindomain.com
www.otherdomain.nl
www.otherdomain.com
... Some of these domains have backlinks too (but not so much). I suggested to 301 redirect them all to the main site. Just to avoid duplicate content. But now the webhoster comes into play: "It's a problem, client has only 1 hosting account, blablabla...". They told me they could CNAME the 20 domains to the main domain. Or A-record them to an IP address. This is too technical stuff for me. So my concrete questions are: Is it smart to do anything at all or am I just harming my client? The main site is ranking pretty well now. And some backlinks are from their copy sites (probably because everywhere the logo links to the full mainsite url). Does the CNAME or A-record solution has the same effect as a 301 redirect, from SEO perspective? Many thanks,
Hans0 -
What should be use 301 or 302 redirection for 404 pages
Please suggest which redirection we should use for 404 pages- 301 or 302. If you can elaborate it with reason then it will be highly appreciated.
Technical SEO | | koamit0 -
302 or 301 redirect to https ?
I am redirecting whole site to https. Is there a difference between 302 or 301 redirect for seo? Site never been indexed. Planning to do that with .htaccess command RewriteCond %{HTTPS} !=on
Technical SEO | | Kotkov
RewriteRule ^(.*) https://%{SERVER_NAME}/$1 [R,L] There are plenty of ways http://www.askapache.com/htaccess/ssl-example-usage-in-htaccess.html Which way would be the best? Thanks is advance0 -
301 Redirect with an Exact Domain name Match
My Client had a site that ranked for a pretty competitive two word phrase, but for a variety of reasons had to transfer the site to a different domain name (with none of the previous keywords). We've 301'd everything just fine to the new site, but our traffic for that two word phrase, as well as related long tail traffic, is beginning to drop. Could the drop be related to something that we didn't do well in the transfer? Or is it due to the new domain name now not being an exact match? Sitenote question: Our Google Analytics is still set up for the former domain name and shows data just fine. Is there any reason to switch GA to the new domain? What are the pros/cons? Much thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | TrevorMcKendrick0 -
How many jumps between 301 redirects is acceptable?
For example, I have a page A that should be redirected to page D, but instead A redirects to B, B redirects to C and C redirects to D. It's something I came across and wondering if its worth the dev time to change it. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | pbrothers240