Hi Keith,

In my experience Google mainly crawls from the US.

You're quite right, GeoIP redirection can cause major issues with indexation - as if you're redirecting everything from the US to the .com googlebot can't see the .co.uk site.

As such, I'm not a fan. Rather than implementing a hard redirect I prefer Amazon's approach. If you visit the amazon.com site from a UK IP you get a javascript overlay that invites you to visit the .co.uk version of the site instead - they let the user decide which site to view rather than actually redirecting them.

This is a nice solution as it ensures that the search bots can crawl both versions of the site, and rankings aren't endangered.

I hope this helps,

Hannah

Hi Neil,

Ranking for a person's name in the US with a 'name.co.uk' is possible - for example I think if you do a search for 'Jane Copland' in the US you'll see janecopland.co.uk ranking 1st.

Do you know how well or otherwise the site is ranking in the US right now?

Essentially the ability to rank will likely be impacted by how common or otherwise the person's name is and how strong their site is.

In terms of actions from you I wouldn't be inclined to change hosting as that's unlikely to have an impact on it's own - however if as you say you're looking to change the hosting in any case then moving it the US probably wouldn't hurt. I'd also encourage you to build links to this domain to strengthen the site.

I guess I'm saying it's not necessarily impossible, but in an ideal world you'd get some sort of generic domain (.com / .net etc).

I hope this helps,

Hannah

Hi Robert,

Whilst what you're proposing could be considered cloaking, my understanding is that the search engines don't see this as manipulative and you should be fine.

However it's impossible to offer any guarantees - implementing this could cause you problems.

For what it's worth I really don't advocate the use of IP redirects - they can cause problems with indexation for example if you inadvertently end up redirecting GoogleBot (which normally crawls from the US) you can render any non-US content invisible. Furthermore I don't think it's necessarily great for users either.

For example, they may just be away in US, but actually want to see UK content. There are also various pecularities which make IP detection less reliable (for example if you're using WiFi with a major train network in the UK you actually come via a German IP).

Rather than doing a hard redirect I prefer Amazon's approach - if you visit Amazon.com from a UK IP you'll see a message which says: "Shopping from the UK? Visit Amazon.co.uk.". That way the user gets to decide for themselves which content they'd rather see.

I hope this helps,

Hannah

Hi Paul,

In the UK people are pretty comfortable with either a .co.uk or a .com - and likewise I've not seen any evidence to suggest that the search engines favour .co.uk sites.

As .com is stronger I'd be inclined to go with that

Hope this helps,

Hannah

Hi Dan,

uk.com is the domain - but your site is effectively sitting on a subdomain - i.e. yourdomain.uk.com

As such I'd expect that technically speaking you could geo-target something like yourdomain.uk.com/fr/ via webmaster tools, but I wouldn't recommend it.

Partially because I don't think it will actually work - overall you're giving off a really mixed signal, but also from a user experience perspective - I don't think French users will want to transact with a uk.com site - it just looks like a site for people in the UK.

Thanks

Hannah

Hello there

Whilst these links are followed (or at least some of them are - it depends on how you're sharing your content) my view would be that they aren't particularly valuable in terms of improving your rankings.

This is for a couple of reasons:

1. It's too easy to manipulate. If these links really 'counted' all you'd need to do is post hundreds (or thousands, or millions) of times to dominate the SERPs. This is not the sort of activity that Google wishes to reward.

2. These are links from specific properties (which Google own). Whilst these links are followed, you've no clue how their handled by the algorithm. Despite being followed, they may not actually be 'counted'. Moreover it's really easy for Google to switch this off i.e. - they could very easily decide to make all of these links no-follow.

I hope this helps,

Hannah

Hi Matteo,

I think it's generally accepted that IP redirection in this scenario isn't considered cloaking by the search engines.

However I have previously seen sites seemingly penalised (possibly because they're tripping some sort of cloaking filter) but in my experience this more commonly happens when different content is shown on the same URL based on IP detection, rather than redirecting to an alternative page.

Cloaking issues aside, you rightly point out that the redirect can cause indexation problems (as the bots may only see your US content) - as such this isn't a solution which I'm keen to recommend.

If you really need to implement something like this, you could try doing what cheapflights.com do. If you visit cheapflights.com from a UK IP they redirect you to this international choice page -

http://www.cheapflights.com/workers/profile-select.aspx?sref=CFUK&redirect=GeoIP&geoip=GB&cfref=CFUS&spt=Home&rp=/:

However, my preference would be to either -

a) Don't do any IP redirection, but upweight the links to the international sites so that there is a clear route for users to find the right version of the site.

b) Use IP detection to show a JavaScript overlay suggesting UK users might want to visit the UK site - but don't actually redirect them.

I hope this helps

Hannah

Hey Lewis,

If they'd used your infographic without credit or attributed credit elsewhere then you'd absolutely be within your rights to ask for attribution. However in this instance as they've given you the appropriate credit there's nothing you can do (whether the link is no-followed or not).

Whilst clearly a followed link would be great I'd strongly advise that you don't pursue this aggressively. You've not said whether or not they routinely no-follow all outbound links on the site but this may just be their policy. Moreover you really don't want to end up upsetting or alienating what could be a great contact in the future.

This is still definitely a win

Hey Dan,

The challenges with international sites are many and varied. The 'best' international strategy really depends on your resources

Here's how I see the advantages / disadvantages of each approach:

Subfolders - ranking may be 'easier' as domain authority is consolidated, but URLs are ugly

The sub-folder approach is often utilised where there's insufficient resource to market and maintain separate international ccTLDs (e.g. .co.uk, .com, .fr etc). The advantage with the subfolder approach is that you're consolidating domain authority - so the links to /en-uk/ (NB do use en-uk NOT en-gb incidentally) pass authority to /en-us/ and vice versa.

You're building one strong site, rather than trying to build two, three (or more) strong sites. However, as you've identified URLs get long and a bit ugly.

ccTLDs - Arguably nicer for users, but might not rank

Conversely, whilst ccTLDs (.co.uk, .com, .fr etc) are nicer from a user's perspective, you may struggle to rank if you're not able to spend sufficient time and resource on marketing and building links to these domains.

If you have the time and resources, I'd probably go down the ccTLD route, but if you don't, then the subfolder route is probably best.

IP redirects

In terms of the IP sniffers etc - be careful

Googlebot typical crawls from the US, and as such is likely to be redirected by your sniffer too. Essentially you're in danger of making any non-US versions invisible as far as Google are concerned. For that reason rather than doing a hard redirect I prefer Amazon's approach - if you visit Amazon.com from a UK IP you'll see a message which says: "Shopping from the UK? Visit Amazon.co.uk.".

That way users get the nudge to direct them to the right site and the bots can still crawl and index all of your content.