Personalization software and SEO
-
Hi guys,
I'm just testing a personalization software in our website, basically changing the "location" text depending on the user's IP.
I can see in my software that when the Google bot comes to our site the personalization software triggers an action changing the location based text to "California". Can this make Google understand that our website targets only users in California and thereof hurt our rankings in other locations nationwide?
I'll appreciate your opinions.
-
So Mr King, would it be reasonable to say that personalizing all locations but California would keep us out of trouble?
Thanks Mike!
-
Thanks for your insights Dirk.
-
Hi Ana,
Just to clarify - if you redirect based on ip to a location based url like /newyork you can still have a link on the page going to the other locations like /sandiego - so Google can access all these pages & index them. This is not possible it the scenario you mentioned.
Not sure how old the article from unbounce is, but Google bot is able to interpret javascript (to a certain extent). Using javascript won't change the problem - as long as you have only one page that adapts automatically to the ip location you will be unable show all versions of the page to Google - it will help your Californian branch, but hurt all the others.
rgds,
Dirk
-
This is great Dirk - thanks so much for your insight as always!
-
Hi Patrick,
If the question would have been about country targeting I guess your answer would have been correct. As mentioned in the article however, the lowest level of geolocation is country. As the question was about locations "nationwide" I would conclude based on this article that at this point of time Google is unable to detect geo-targeted content based on region or city.
Even for countries I think it's a risky business - as the article doesn't indicate if this "local" bots visit the sites with the same frequency & depth as the normal ones, and they don't clearly indicate which country ip's are used.
It's a different story for languages - because you can indicate in the HTTP header that the content is depending on the user's language. A similar case is the dynamic serving for mobile (https://developers.google.com/webmasters/mobile-sites/mobile-seo/configurations/dynamic-serving?hl=en) - here you can indicate that the content is changing based on the user agent.
As far as I know, there is no way to indicate in the HTTP header that the content is varying based on ip address.
rgds,
Dirk
-
Hi both,
Thanks a lot for your ideas and suggestions. No doubt it's a tough subject. I don't really understand Google's position about this, on one hand they want you to provide a better user experience (what can be done through personalization) and on the other hand they don't seem to be providing reasonable solutions to potential SEO drawbacks.
Dirk, referencing this line of yours "What you could do is automatically redirect the user to the appropriate page based on ip - but still have the other pages accessible via normal links", don't you think if the user is directly redirected to the "location based-page" then the Google bot coming from California (as an example) will also be redirected to it and then understand that the website is targeting California?
I read something at Unbounce regarding dynamic text replacement that caught my attention http://documentation.unbounce.com/hc/en-us/articles/203661004-Dynamic-Text-Replacement-pro-
They say “It's always been possible with Unbounce to do text replacement using a little bit of JavaScript, but unfortunately the bots and crawlers that Google (and other ad networks) use to validate your landing page quality don't read Javascript.”
If the fact that the bots cannot read Javascript is true maybe using Javascript for small personalization actions such as changing the location-based text maybe the solution. I wonder if this follows google guidelines or not.
Again I'll appreciate your answers; I'll go through all the links and information and keep investigating. I really need to find some technically supported facts.
Thank again. Ana
-
Hi Dirk
Thanks for the corrections and examples here. I appreciate it and learned something new here myself.
Out of curiosity, what do you make of the following: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6144055?hl=en
After reading your explanation, and Google's suggestion in bold and red here, I understand the importance of your recommendation. I was just wondering your thoughts on this particular article and what you make of it.
Thanks so much again and well done!
-
Hi,
I don't really agree with the answer of Patrick. Depending on the level of personalisation you apply, it can hurt your rankings for locations outside California (our eventual other ip locations for Google bot).
As an example - you manage a chain of Chinese restaurants spread around the country and you have the domain mychineserestaurant.com.
If users accesses the site directly in New York, he will see the address, picture, phone number etc. from the New York restaurant. Googlebot however will never see this content - the bot will only be able to access the content from your branch in Los Angeles. While this is great for the user experience, there is no way to show Google the other locations, as you are obliged to show the bot the same content as normal human users, and hence show the information based on the ip of the bot.
The example of Groupon given by Patrick is not exactly the same - they personalise the homepage based on your ip - but if you search for Groupon New York you go to http://www.groupon.com/local/new-york-city
What you could do is automatically redirect the user to the appropriate page based on ip - but still have the other pages accessible via normal links. In the example above - accessing the site in New York I would go by default to mychineserestaurant.com/newyork but with the option to change the location. This way Google bot would be able to crawl all the locations. It's also the advice coming from Matt Cutts: https://www.mattcutts.com/blog/give-each-store-a-url/
If the personalisation is only minor (example only the local address on the homepage) and if you already have targeted pages for each location it should not really be a problem.
To be honest - it's rather my own opinion than something which is supported by hard facts.
Hope this helps,
Dirk
-
Hi there
Don't worry about this, it shouldn't be an issue. One thing you can do is target your website in Webmaster Tools if you're looking to target specific regions.
Amazon and Groupon have personalization happening on their sites as well - but that doesn't effect their ratings.
I would also take a look at:
SEO in the Personalization AgeLet me know if this helps at all!
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
-
Craft CMS SEO Resources
I'm just starting out in freelance SEO & I've taken on a client who is using Craft CMS (version 2.0ish) for their site. I am not even close to being competent enough to manually code via Twig, but I had the main developer install the SEOmatic plugin for me. My question from here is - are there any resources or tips I should be aware of starting out? I just started by updating meta title/descriptions via "New Template Meta(s)" but I'm a bit concerned i'm doing the "template path" thing right - I haven't seen any visible changes in browser, and the SERP preview I'm getting is giving me a broken link. But i'm doing a fresh Moz crawl right now to see if the changes took place or not. so 1. Am I on the right track? 2. How long does it typically take for changes to start to show? 3. Is there anything I should be aware of? any follow up questions just let me know, I'll be following this thread!
Technical SEO | | dig_ad_austin0 -
Internal Links - Absolute Better Then Relative for SEO
Hi All Currently my site has a mixture of relative and absolute links for internal links. Could I just ask two questions? 1. Is it better for SEO for the site to feature only one method of internal links?
Technical SEO | | ruislip18
2. If this is the case, is it better for the links to be absolute? I'm reaching the conclusion that I should review all internal links and set them to be absolute, but wanted to check. Including blog posts, this is a 70-80 page wordpress site, it wouldn't take too long to check the links Many Thanks0 -
What to do about this subdomain for SEO?
This is a bit of an unusual structure and I'm having difficulty explaining the question so pardon my being a 'noob', haha. The website I'm working on has some content under Forums that is hosted on another domain. The main website is https://yournorthside.org.au/ and if you select under the main Nav > Forums > Lived Experience it will take you to https://yournorthside.saneforums.org/t5/Lived-Experience-Forum/ct-p/lived-experience-forum. So it's as if it's a subdomain. (notice even the appearance of the main menu changes, weird) Apparently, saneforums.org has a requirement for that content to be on that subdomain. So therefore it's not part of my sitemap and now crawled or indexed. My question is is this structure okay? What are the implications for SEO? Should I be looking to implement some type of no follow link or something? Or is it actually beneficial in terms of all their content gives us 'link juice'? Can you link me to any resources / articles that give further insight?
Technical SEO | | kelseyc0 -
Google Places for Local SEO
I am a webmaster at a company with over 50 clients, and I have to list the businesses of our clients in Google Places. Most of our clients are architecture agencies and construction companies, so they are unfamiliar with these things, and that's why I have to list their businesses on Google Places. It would be easier for me to manage all the places for these different businesses if I create the places with one gmail account. Can I use one gmail account to list the businesses for all our clients?
Technical SEO | | Arianittt2 -
Domain redirection and seo implications
We have an existing site that is a subdomain but we recently acquired an exact match domain. Will building links to the exact match domain and having the domain point at our existing subdomain work or should we convert the entire site and redirect our existing subdomain to the new domain? What I'm trying to figure out is how to maximize the benefit here and how the existing mass of links pointing to our existing subdomain (shop.domain.com) can be used. New domain: keywordshop.com Existing URL: shop.domain.com
Technical SEO | | CHarkins0 -
Things to consider with regards to SEO when redesigning a website
I will be redesigning a website in wordpress. currently the website is html/css based My concern is i dont want to lose any of the Search engine rankings. what should i put in place to avoid that situation
Technical SEO | | mancmusicman0 -
Keywords and content and seo advice please
Hi i am building a site at the moment which i am working on. please ignore the state of the site as we are just playing with designs at the moment but please do take notice of the top part. The site is a travel magazine but i am a bit concerned. The keywords that we will be looking at to drive travel will be as follows, cheap flights gatwick, holiday magazine and travel magazine. Now i do not want the site to look untidy with loads of content describing the site but at the same time i want google to know what the site is and for people to pick the site up with the search terms that we are aiming for. the site is www.cheapflightsgatwick.com Can anyone please show me some examples of how i should structure the site to attract the keywords and give me some advice. It seems hard when you are designing a magazine site where the content changes all the time to try and attract the search engines with your keywords. any advice would be great
Technical SEO | | ClaireH-1848860 -
301 Redirects - SEO Benefit?
Hello, Years ago, our company started out as a Yahoo store. We've since moved onto another website with its own shopping cart but since the Yahoo store is almost 10 years old, there's a lot of history there and it still exists with the occasional order. We currently use it for reputation management purposes with links to our real ecommerce site but we're thinking of just redirecting the Yahoo store to our ecommerce site. Is there any SEO benefit in doing this? We were also kind of penalized by Panda. Would this help us out at all (the descriptions on both sites could be considered duplicate content).
Technical SEO | | airnwater0