Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for taking time to help us out as well.

We are checking out your recommendations, especially interesting is learning from Moz's experience.

Kindest Regards

Luciano

Hi Jeff,

Thanks for taking time to help us out.

Since you rightly pointed out that forwarding traffic gradually to a “/disallow” sub-domain will hurt us, we were thinking of taking this course:

1. Roll out the new site on a /test/ sub-domain with the “disallow” / “no index” instructions
2. Invite some visitors (also via geo-targeting) to click on a banner asking them to visit our new site (We will try not to redirect too much traffic to /test/)
3. Monitor this limited traffic to weed out any problems and use crawling tools to crawl the website for two weeks, identifying and correcting any errors in the process
4. Remove pages from /test/ and push new website “live”

Looking forward to your feedback.

Kindest Regards

Luciano

We are going to migrate our site but we cannot do this gradually, so before we complete the whole migration, we were thinking of launching the new site on a sub-domain and gradually redirect traffic to the sub-domain, starting with 10%, moving up steadily so that we then migrate to the new site within four/five weeks.

The new site will have a new URL structure on the same domain, with a complete re-design and the IP address will be changing as well, even though the server geographical location will remain the same.

a) Should we noindex the new sub-domain while the new site is on trial?

b) Are there any other issues we should look out for?

Thanks in Advance

Thanks Chris Menke! Checking out the videos now!

Thank you so much Paddy Displays for such a prompt and detailed answer.

We would like our website to show different content according to different Geo-locations (but in the same language).  For example, if www.mywebsite.com is accessed from the US, it would show text (in English) appealing to North Americans, but, if accessed from Japan, it would show text (also in English) that appeals more to Japanese people. In the Middle East, we would like the website to show different images than those shown in the US and Asia.

Our main concern is that we would like to keep the same URL.

• How will Google index these pages? Will it index the www.mywebsite.com (Japan version) in its Asia archives and the www.mywebsite.com (US version) in its North American archives?
• Will Google penalise us for showing different content across Geo-locations on the same URL?
• What if a URL is meant to show content only in Japan?
• Are there any other issues that we should be looking out for?

Kindest Regards

L.B.

Hi Miriam,

Thanks for this! Apologies, i'm being a little cautious about saying too much about the industry as this is a delicate situation at the moment!  Essentially a travel agent and hotel chain might be a close comparison where the travel agents are creating places pages claiming the hotels more or less as their own. As you say, merging pages might become a real problem.  I guess managing pages for each agent is a huge amount of work but would be the only real way of keeping any sort of control - it would still leave us with the issue of merging and in any case, i don't think our agents would actually subscribe to this.

Anyway, many thanks for your help, it's given me a lot more to think about for sure, especially your interpretation of that particular guideline.

Thanks for the input Dejan! My issue though is that we already have an official (or canonical - at least we'd hope it is) place page set up for each of our locations using one account. Our agents are setting duplicate pages up in different languages. Potentially, there could be  20 plus pages with different descriptions but all for the same location/business.  This would only happen of course if we passed the postcards on to them.  In some cases, though, the page was validated through a different phone number, so we have no control in this case.

I'm currently trying to develop a clear understanding and policy for my company on how we deal with Google place pages, specifically where we stand on places pages being created by our agents.

We run a business in the travel industry with a number of locations around the world.  Our services are sold via travel agents.  Naturally, we set up places pages for each of our locations but recently we've noticed agents setting up places pages for these locations with different titles & their own contact details (same address though). In one case we've received verification postcards which we've been asked to pass on.

The pages are set up in 'good faith' to promote business in the agents respective countries and languages but i'm concerned that we are ending up with multiple pages for the same location, hurting our brand, losing our own pages through being buried and ending up with our account being suspended at some point down the line.

There are a number of terms on Google guideline page, in particular, this one:

"Do not create more than one listing for each business location, either in a single account or multiple accounts."

I contacted my Adwords account manager but didn't get a very clear response on this.

What i'm looking for is some 3rd party, definitive advice/opinions on this scenario.  Should we be asking agents not to create place pages? Why should they list.. could it end up hurting both of us? Are there pros and cons to this or is it a clear cut case?