Internationalization and 302 redirects

[robertorg]

Hi,

We're thinking in an internationalization process for a travel webpage. We'd like to use one domain (.com) in TV and press marketing and have several domains with each country ccTLD domain.

We've shown that for example Tripadvisor makes a 302 redirect if you connect to tripadvisor.com and you are in another country. But we've detected aswell, that if you use the Browser Agent Google Bot, it didn't.

It appears to be a cloaking, but really they're redirecting the users to the best places for them, and detecting Googlebot for not make the redirect, they ensures that it indexes well all the place. Booking.com makes something similar but with the same domain, detecting if you're Googlebot or not.

Do you think that this is a danger thing if you're not as big as Tripadvisor? They makes this redirection by level server, could be safest to do with javascript? if we do with javascript, Google will take this path instead of read the page?

Thanks!

[robertorg]

Thanks to both for your responses.

I don't think that search engines shouldn't see this like a manipulative action, but maybe they do and we'll be banned.

Thomas, I couldn't use a GeoDNS because I think that GoogleBot always come from an US IP, so it will only index and rack our US domain. This is the reason for try to identify GoogleBot and don't make the redirect, I Google had a spider with an IP of each country we shouldn't have this problem, but think that this isn't suceed.

We'll use ccTLD for each one, so Webmaster Tools assign the country automatically.

Best regards,

Robert

[Hannah_Smith]

Hi Robert,

Whilst what you're proposing could be considered cloaking, my understanding is that the search engines don't see this as manipulative and you should be fine.

However it's impossible to offer any guarantees - implementing this could cause you problems.

For what it's worth I really don't advocate the use of IP redirects - they can cause problems with indexation for example if you inadvertently end up redirecting GoogleBot (which normally crawls from the US) you can render any non-US content invisible. Furthermore I don't think it's necessarily great for users either.

For example, they may just be away in US, but actually want to see UK content. There are also various pecularities which make IP detection less reliable (for example if you're using WiFi with a major train network in the UK you actually come via a German IP).

Rather than doing a hard redirect I prefer Amazon's approach - if you visit Amazon.com from a UK IP you'll see a message which says: "Shopping from the UK? Visit Amazon.co.uk.". That way the user gets to decide for themselves which content they'd rather see.

I hope this helps,

Hannah

[BlueprintMarketing]

I thought this might help as well

ultraDNS or neustar I feel is not as good of a value in comparison to DynECT however in this particular case where you're trying to serve information to specified countries that will be speaking different languages and you will not want to use cookies or Java when doing it I would utilize a system like this as it is specifically designed for what you're doing. I can tell you from using this company in the past for my DNS needs ( again I primarily use DynECT and prefer it) that  neustar in this instance may be a better fit because of its much larger offering into Internet marketing especially the fact that every other DNS manufacturer but I have ever heard of and I do research DNS quite a bit use one company for geo-DNS other than neustar

http://www.neustar.biz/enterprise/resources/digital-marketing/localized-advertising-report

& PDF with more

http://www.neustar.biz/enterprise/docs/product-literature/ip-intelligence/localize-web-content.pdf

also some highlights on the best way to go when building a international website

http://foliovision.com/2009/10/seo-expert-training-london#handle-multiple-countries

hope this helps,

Thomas

[BlueprintMarketing]

you are currently using different TLD's in order to optimize for each country correct?

If so Google bot needs to be told in Webmaster tools when setting up each new TLD which country to target.

If you do not do this and you are using a  JavaScript switch in order to target different countries you will most likely end up with Google bot doing what it's doing targeting your first domain

if you are thinking about cloaking I would strongly advise against it it will only hurt you in your efforts to get ranked.

I would not use JavaScript to do this I would use DNS and the CDN's

for instance I would use DynECT they have excellent geo-DNS and have been doing this for a long time.

Please look at

http://dyn.com/dns/dynect-managed-dns/advanced-feature-geo-traffic-management/

Check out

http://www.distilled.net/blog/seo/mozcon-international-seo/

http://www.stateofsearch.com/geotargeting-tlds-sub-folders-sub-domains/

&

http://www.slideshare.net/HannahBoBanna/international-seo-be-wizard-2011

I hope this helps,

Thomas