Redirecting the .com of our site
-
Hey guys,
A company I consult for has a different site for its users depending on the geography. Example:
When a visitor goes to www.company.com if the user is from the EU, it gets redirected to http://eu.company.com
If the user is from the US, it goes to http://us.company.com
And so on.
I have two questions:
Does having a redirect on the .com will influence rankings on each specific sub-site? I suspect it will affect the .com since it will simply not get indexed but not sure if affects the sub domains.
The content on this sub-sites are not different (I´m still trying to figure out why they are using the sub-domains). Will they get penalized for duplicate content?
Thanks!
-
Thank you Gianluca!
As always, your advice is top notch.
Cheers!
F.
-
As written by David Sottimano in a comment to my post about International SEO, first consider this:
"Avoid automatic redirection based on the user’s perceived language. These redirections could prevent users (and search engines) from viewing all the versions of your site." - support.google.com source
Ask your client this: is it absolutely necessary to deliver the Irish user exclusively to the Irish site? Should the Irish user be able to see other sites?
If the answers are yes and no respectively, you can get away with IP sniffing & server side redirects as long as you do not force redirection on American IPs (Note: Gbot still crawls from the US, but if they change, this won't work). The downsides; usability issues, and the fact that American IPs can see anything they want.
You could also use client side redirection (javascript) with even American IPs with no real consequence (Gbot shouldn't* execute the JS). This is a bit more flimsy, and won't work at all with JS disabled users. Maybe use http://www.wipmania.com/en/api/ for example, and maybe test to see what pisses people off less?
Said that... I would not use geo redirections, but present a box hover or bar (as it does Google when you visit, for instance, Google.it from Finland) where asking if the want to visit the .eu site or prefer to visit the US one (and vice versa). That way you are sure your site will be crawled with not problems (at least not this problem).
For the duplicated content issue, check out what I write about the rel="alternate" hreflang in my post here on Moz.
-
Anyone else?
-
Anyone else can shed some light on this?
Thanks!
-
Hello,
Redirecting your main domain to sub-domain isn't a good technique in seo practice however it is still useful having some strong reason. As you said your client want a redirect based on geographical location and goes to sub-domain etc. In this matter I just wanna say it is extremely dangerous idea because of providing same content using different URLs could be a penalty be Google. It could be acceptable if you provide language translations with your sub-domains.
I hope this would be helpful to you.
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
-
CGI Redirects
Trying to 301 old legacy files like oldsite.com/green/red.cgi/blue/ using this htaccess code: Redirect 301 /green/red.cgi/blue/ http://www.newsite.com/summary-page/
Technical SEO | | SoulSurfer8
Instead it's redirecting to: newsite.com/red.cgi/blue/ FYI oldsite.com's htaccess file does not have any global 301 rules that would conflict Does anyone know if cgi files require a different 301 syntax? Thanks!0 -
How to find temporary redirects of existing site you don't control?
I am getting ready to move a clients site from another company. They have like 35 tempory redirects according to MOZ. Question is, how can I find out then current redirects so I can update everything for the new site? Do I need access to the current htaccess file to do this?
Technical SEO | | scott3150 -
Redirecting HTTP to HTTPS - How long does it take Google to re-index the site?
hello Moz We know that this year, Moz changed its domain to moz.com from www.seomoz.org
Technical SEO | | joony
however, when you type "site:seomoz.org" you still can find old urls indexed on Google (on page 7 and above) We also changed our site from http://www.example.com to https://www.example.com
And Google is indexing both sites even though we did proper 301 redirection via htaccess. How long would it take Google to refresh the index? We just don't worry about it? Say we redirected our entire site. What is going to happen to those websites that copied and pasted our content? We have already DMCAed their webpages, but making our site https would mean that their website is now more original than our site? Thus, Google assumes that we have copied their site? (Google is very slow on responding to our DMCA complaint) Thank you in advance for your reply.0 -
.htaccess redirects
I've done some research but can't find a good answer to this question. Here's my situation: Site redirects from example.com to www.example.com just fine. However, it doesn't work so well for internal pages. My site incorrectly redirects (non-www) example.com/page2 to www.example.com when it should instead go to www.example.com/page2 So I need a method to redirect non-www internal pages to www versions. Currently I have this in my .htaccess - do I need to modify the rules? RewriteEngine on
Technical SEO | | 3plains
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www.example.com
RewriteRule (.*) http://www.example.com/$1 [R=301,L] Thanks0 -
301 redirect of a subdirectory
Hello! I am working on a website with the following structure: example.com/sub1/sub2/sub3. The page "example.com/sub1" does not exist (I know this is not the optimal architecture to have this be a nonexistent page). But someone might type that address, so I would like it to redirect it to example.com/sub1/sub2/sub3. I tried the following redirect: redirect 301 /sub1 http://example.com/sub1/sub2/sub3. But with this redirect in place, if I go to example.com/sub1, I get redirected to example.com/sub1/sub2/sub3/sub2/sub3 (the redirect just inserts extra subdirectories). If someone types "example.com/sub1" into a browser, I would "example.com/sub1/sub2/sub3" to come up. Is this possible? Thank you!
Technical SEO | | nyc-seo0 -
Domain redirect
Recently we launched a site under a new domain, the site is doing well under the URL. Client calls me today and would like to have another domain he owns point to the new site. The domain he has has no history and no content. He is under the impression that people are looking for him by typing in www.domainxyz.com. I attempted to explain otherwise to him, but I lost. Question, what are the drawbacks of taking this domin and doing a perm redirect via . Httpaccess file?
Technical SEO | | VanadiumInteractive0 -
Want to Target Mobile site for Google Mobile Version and Desktop Site for Google Desktop Version
I have ecommerce site with both mobile version and desktop version. Mobile version starts with m.example.com and full version starts with www.example.com I am using same content through out both site and using 301 redirection by detecting user agent vice-versa. My both sites are accessible to crawl by any google spider. I have submitted both sites's sitemap to GWT and mobile site having mobile sitemap xml, so google can easily recognize my mobile site. Is it going to help to rank my both sites as per my expectation? I need to rank for mobile site in Google mobile and ranking for desktop site in Google desktop version. Some of pages of my mobile site are started to appearing in Google desktop version. So how I can stop them to appear in Google desktop? Your comments are highly welcome.
Technical SEO | | Hexpress0 -
Domain redirect seo
Hello, my domain www.pacomarca.com and when i start the new campaing i get this pronblem: We have detected that the domain www.pacomarca.com and the domain pacomarca.com both respond to web requests and do not redirect. Having two "twin" domains that both resolve forces them to battle for SERP positions, making your SEO efforts less effective. We suggest redirecting one, then entering the other here. my domain is in networksolutions.com. how can i resolve it? many thanks Gonzalo
Technical SEO | | Kuna0