If I redirect based on IP will Google still crawl my international sites if I implement Hreflang
-
We are setting up several international sites. Ideally, we wouldn't set up any redirects, but if we have to (for merchandising reasons etc) I'd like to assess what the next best option would be.
A secondary option could be that we implement the redirects based on IP. However, Google then wouldn't be able to access the content for all the international sites (we're setting up 6 in total) and would only index the .com site. I'm wondering whether the Hreflang annotations would still allow Google to find the International sites? If not, that's a lot of content we are not fully benefiting from.
Another option could be that we treat the Googlebot user agent differently, but this would probably be considered as cloaking by the G-Man.
If there are any other options, please let me know.
-
I would not recommend IP based redirects. You can detect and do an initial redirect (with a javascript overlay telling people that you think they are in a specific area), but you'd have to give all users (including Googlebot) the ability to go to the other URLs as well.
HREFLANG is not meant for geo-targeting and IP addresses only tell you location. You only need HREFLANG if there are language changes within a country targeted site or universal (not geotargeted) site.
Even ignoring that, the HREFLANG would not help if people were always redirected based on IP, so I don't suggest that.
Hope this helps, let me know if you have any more questions.
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
-
Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites
Hello, It's been a year since we launched our website and at first, we did it with a domain name called misitio.co. We have just bought the domain name mysite.com and my doubts are what should I do with the domains I have in other countries, for example .mx .br, should I redirect them to mysite.com or manage them independently? Thank you very much
International SEO | | Isabelcabreromunoz1 -
I have more than 4000 pages but still have a low trafic. Would love to know more to be better ranked ?
My website is a magazine about travel and fashion. But even if i have a lot of pages, I am still low in ranking. Why ? Thanks for any advice !
International SEO | | ccjourn0 -
Alternate Hreflang Problem
We have two travel websites.
International SEO | | Izzet
One in English language for people living in the UK.
One in Turkish language for people living in Turkey. The major difference is:
English (UK) website shows 4+ nights accomodation prices because UK travellers never come for less than 4 nights.
Turkish website shows 1-night, 2-night, 3-night prices because Turkish travellers never stay for more than 3 nights. We are using rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tags properly on our two websites. Today, I am disappointed to see Google display the wrong result. When a user in Turkey searches a Turkish keyword on Google.com.tr;
Google is showing the English language website. When I click on Search Settings > Language;
I see that English is selected under this question:
"Which language should Google products use?" This is a big problem for us.
Many rich users in Turkey, who are more willing to buy our services, speak English fluently and they may choose to use Gmail in English. But we are losing business because these Turkish customers don't convert at all on the Enlish (UK) website because of the reason I explained above. 1) What can we do?
2) If we remove the rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tags now, will it hurt any of the websites?
We have seen an increase in Google rankings for the Turkish language website after using rel="alternate" hreflang="x" tags. Izzet0 -
Best local business directories for a digital agency based in London
Does anyone know the best local business directories for SEO purposes. Our business is a digital agency based in London (United Kingdom) Thanks Rob
International SEO | | roberthseo0 -
Google suggesting a translation
Hi everybody, I notice since some months that Google when used for german language results proposes a translation next to the listing of one of my websites. When searching for english results (hl=en) it does not propose a translation! My website is clearly in german (given as target in GWMT and by meta tag). Other pages on the same domain are not treated this way by Google. No translation is proposed for all subpages of this website. Obviously, Google considers the homepage of this website english instead of german. Any fix for that? It is a *.org Wolfgang
International SEO | | wgr_strategic0 -
Different Home Sites for different Countries but same Language
We'r starting a new webshop soon and and one of our programmers came up with the following: Different Home Sites (Index Pages) for Austria and Germany. The Language is both times German but some words are different than others. The customer would like to have that. So we would have: domain.com (No Austrian or German IP Address) domain.com/at/ (User with Austrian IP Adress) domain.com/de/ (User with German IP Address) Is this SEO wise a disadvantage? How to set up the canonicals? DE & AT Page with the Canonical on the main Domain? Any advice? Thank you
International SEO | | leitpix0 -
Redirecting users based on location
My site is available in EN, DE, SW, SP, FR, IT, CH and JP. However, the EN sites ranks much better than the other languages, and even when searching in another language the EN homepage is normally the result that appears. Would it be worthwhile to automatically redirect users to the site in the same language they are searching in or country they are searching from? If so, how do I go about this? Thanks!
International SEO | | theLotter0 -
International Hub site: .uk vs domain vs subdomain
Financial company with 2 sites: 1- Mybrand.com for the US market.
International SEO | | FXDD
2- global.mybrand.com is the hub for international with selection for 10 languages: drop-down allows selecting between mybrand.jp, mybrand.fr, etc Now we have the opportunity to redesign the site from zero and I am exploring to get rid of the subdomain for the global site What would be your preference to use as the international hub? a) mybrand.co.uk: I have to use lawyers to get the URL from squatter b) mybrandGlobal.com : URL easy to get, and can be geo targeted using google webmaster tools. Cons: It might not rank as well as .co.uk in the UK, which is our biggest market c) global.mybrand.com-- pros: keep using it because it is aged and has some authority. Google might now see subdomains as part of TLD, thus making it a valid way to separate international from US .. Cons: SEO best practices advice to avoid subdomains because it might not pass full link value across domains. There is not really different content the subdomain, it is just the hub for international Thanks in advance for the help0