How to test a geo tagged homepage?
-
The e-commerance system we have has a geo tagged hompage system so you can set up different homepages based on the user country IP. But I want to test what the default homepage is, if the system can not get the user IP, does anyone know of a way to do this?
Also does googles bot, not give an IP for this, or is it always an American IP (even if your site is set to a different country)?
Thanks
-
Unfortunately it seems that the e-commerce (which is closed sourced) is built around this geo IP location system.
When I checked the cached version of the site it was indeed the American version, which was just the default simple version of the homepage (no keyword text)
I then google searched stings of texts from our UK / Irish homepages, and no results found
So I then created an American version of the homepage (just a dup of the uk/irish homepages)
A week later did my search test, and got a hit.
Now we are starting to rank for a few more keywords on the homepage
-
I do not recommend redirecting people to different content based on IP. Googlebot may change IP addresses but it's always from the US. This makes it impossible for Googlebot to see any of your international content. You can use the IP address to ask the user if they want to set their settings to a different country and be placed there every time, but do not assume.
-
There are many proxy services out there so you can do Geo Testing. Basically they have a server in that country and using their settings you funnel your requests through that server and it's just like you were in that country. I know there's Wonder Proxy and I'm sure you could find others.
-
I'm not sure about the 'testing tool' thing, but Google says that Googlebot's IP Address changes from 'time to time' but that same explanation says you can look in your website's logs and do a reverse DNS lookup.
In terms of a 'default' page... in my opinion you should ensure you have a standard (unmodified/non-redirected) home page. So if your primary market is the USA then that's the default and then only redirect non-US based folk. That way you determine the default home page and aren't reliant on Googlebot's IP (or any other crawler's for that matter).
Hope this helps.
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
-
How to stop /tag creating duplicate content - Wordpress
Hi, I keep getting alert for duplicate content. It seems Wordpress is creating it through a /tag https://www.curveball-media.co.uk/tag/cipr/ https://www.curveball-media.co.uk/tag/pr-agencies/ Something in the way we've got Wordpress set up?
Technical SEO | | curveballmedia0 -
International SEO - Hreflang tags and URL Structure
Hello, I wonder if any SEO internationalisation experts can help. We are a UK centric business with a .com domain which all our traffic currently goes to. We have been growing in the US and are therefore looking to internationalise our website by building out some US pages using the subfolder .com/us. Since the keywords we wish to target in the US are different to the keywords we are targeting elsewhere, when implementing hreflang tags is it possible to use a different URL for the US page? So let’s say we are targeting ‘estate car’ generally but want to target ’station wagon’ as the keyword for the equivalent US page, can the URLs be different? Example: General page: www.example.com/estate-car US: www.example.com/us/station-wagon Hreflang tags: Would that be the correct implementation? Any help or guidance would be much appreciated!
Technical SEO | | SEOCT0 -
Geo Targeting Content Question
Hi, all First question here so be gentle, please My question is around geo targeted dynamic content; at the moment we run a .com domain with, for example, an article about running headphones and then at the end - taking up about 40% of the content - is a review of some people can buy, with affiliate links. We have a .co.uk site with the same page about running headphones and then 10 headphones for the UK market. Note: rel alternative is used on the pages to point to each other, therefore (hopefully) removing duplicate content issues. This design works well but it involves having to build links to two pages, in the case of this example. What we are thinking of doing is to just use the .com domain and having the product page of the page served dynamically, ie, people in the UK see UK products and people in US see US products. What are people's thoughts on this technique, please? From my understanding, it wouldn't be any problem with Google for cloaking etc because a googlebot and a human from the same country will see the same content. The site is made in Wordpress and has <....html lang="en-US"> (for the .com) in the header. Would this cause problems for the page ranking in the UK etc? The ultimate goal of doing this would be to reduce link building efforts by halving the number of pages which links would have to be built for. I welcome any feedback. Many thanks
Technical SEO | | TheMuffinMan0 -
Do you need a canonical tag for search and filter pages?
Hi Moz Community, We've been implementing new canonical tags for our category pages but I have a question about pages that are found via search and our filtering options. Would we still need a canonical tag for pages that show up in search + a filter option if it only lists one page of items? Example below. www.uncommongoods.com/search.html/find/?q=dog&exclusive=1 Thanks!
Technical SEO | | znotes0 -
Why is our login page ranked higher than our homepage?
Hello everyone, When you search "ProtonMail", our Login page always ranks #1 while our homepage ranks #2. We're unsure why this is happening. The PA for our homepage is higher than the login page, and the login page itself basically has zero content except for a login form. We don't want to put the login page on robots.txt, we want to do our best to preserve it so that people can login. However it still does not make sense to us how the login page ranks higher, even though it has a lesser PA. I'd appreciate any help or advice you might have. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | kevinzh0 -
Best practice to handle Wordpress Categories/Tags
Hello Mozzers, I am sure a lot of people here are using wordpress. How do you handle Categories & Tags? I came across that they produce a lot of duplicate content in the google index. My website is brand new so I don't have any traffic yet, how would you handle it? noindex, follow? Or block /categories/ and /tags/ from robots.txt? Probably I am completely wrong with both ways? I am grateful for your answers! Best regards!
Technical SEO | | grobro0 -
Tripping versus Tripping.com in title tags?
Hi All, We had a quick question regarding the construction of title tags throughout our site (yay for optimizing!). We were wondering what is considered best practice or what we should be considering when we're deciding how to end our title tags - basically, it's between Tripping and Tripping.com. For example: This is the content | Tripping OR This it the content | Tripping.com Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated! Thanks,
Technical SEO | | seospeedwagon
Bianca0 -
Best Implementation of a Title Tag
If My Targeted keyword are: Mussoorie Hotels Hotels in Mussoorie Mussoorie Resorts Resorts in Mussoorie What of the below 3 will be the best Title Tag After Panda and Penguine ? Hotels and Resorts in Mussoorie Mussoorie Hotels | Mussoorie Resorts | Luxury Budget & Economical Accommodation in Mussoorie Mussoorie Hotels, Mussoorie Resorts, Hotels in Mussoorie, Resorts in Musoorie please suggest!
Technical SEO | | WildHawk0