Hi All,

I'm trying to find more information on what IP address Googlebot would use when arriving to crawl your site from an external backlink.

I'm under the impression Googlebot uses international signals to determine the best IP address to use when crawling (US / non-US) and then carries on with that IP when it arrives to your website?

E.g. - Googlebot finds www.example.co.uk. Due to the ccTLD, it decides to crawl the site with a UK IP address rather than a US one. As it crawls this UK site, it finds a subdirectory backlink to your website and continues to crawl your website with the aforementioned UK IP address.

Is this a correct assumption, or does Googlebot look at altering the IP address as it enters a backlink / new domain?

Also, are ccTLDs the main signals to determine the possibility of Google switching to an international IP address to crawl, rather than the standard US one? Am I right in saying that hreflang tags don't apply here at all, as their purpose is to be used in SERPS and helping Google to determine which page to serve to users based on their IP etc.

If anyone has any insight this would be great.