GeoIP Redirects & hreflang
-
Hello,
We believe we've had some issues with hreflang tags not remaining validated due to the implementation of geoIP redirects.
Previously, if a user clicked a landing page on Google search that was not targeted for their territory, they would instantly be redirected to a sub path that targets their territory using geoIP redirects.
We're planning to remove the initial geoIP redirects and have messaging that prompts the user to either stay on the page they've landed on, or be redirected to page that is right for their territory.
However, if a user has selected to be redirected to a sub path that is targeted for their territory, they will have a cookie preference set for the IP location they've selected, and will continue to be redirected to their chosen sub path.
My question is, will a crawler follow and trigger the geo preference cookie, which could potentially cause complexities in validating hreflang tags and ranking of content for the right market.
Thanks.
-
This sounds like the best approach. Typically, most crawlers won't save or interact with cookies, so Google etc will just see the site they've requested.
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
-
Hreflang alternate as single-hop 301 - is this actually a problem?
First, this is not a question about whether 301 redirects pass page rank. My question is that if your hreflang alternative page URL is a 301 redirect*, are there any downsides. In all cases with our situation, the 301 redirect is single-hop and working. Tools, such as SEMRush seem to flag this as a non-canonical hreflang error, but I'm not able to find any cases where Google has suggested a redirecting hreflang is a problem. I'd appreciate any information on this issue before we invest extra time on a large international site. *In Drupal, there are scenarios where it's all but impossible to avoid having a 301 redirect in your hreflang alternate URL without significant custom work.
International SEO | | scottclark0 -
Expanding into new country & what to do with Seach Console
Hi! We're looking at expanding into new countries, and will probably go with the subfolder route. Our main website is focused on Ireland on Search Console (and probably always will be), so will this be affected if I add subfolders onto the end? And can I shop the main site from crawling the new URL's in the subfolder. So if www.example.com is focused on Ireland, and we add www.example.com/de for Germany, can we let Google know not to index the German pages in Ireland? And will I need to do anything to the Irish version (e.g, change www.example.com to www.example.com/ie)
International SEO | | Frankie-BTDublin0 -
Hreflang problem?
Hello, We do have a client with a site in multiple versions (one domain per country). French and Spanish versions work really fine, but the problem comes up with the .com and .co.uk versions. This is my hreflang piece of code: When I go to Google.co.uk and search the exact match domain keyword "how much cost an app", I only find the howmuchcostanapp.com domain (1st or 2nd page) instead of howmuchcostanapp.co.uk. The UK one is not appearing! This is very strange. I have spent a lot of time trying to solve this, but I don't know what else to do. Thanks a lot in advance for your comments and help!
International SEO | | Yeeply.com0 -
/en-us/ Outranking Root Domain and other hreflang errors
I'm working with a new site that has a few regional sites in subdirectories /en-us/, /en-au/, etc and just noticed that some of our interior pages (ourdomain.com/en-us/interior-page1/ ) are outranking the equivalent ourdomain.com/interior-page1. This only occurs in some SERPS while others correctly display the non-regional result. I was told we have hreflang tags implemented correctly in the meta information of each of our pages but have yet to research deeply. Should we even have a /en-us/ version when our root domain is the default version, in english, and targeted to US primarily? Any help would be appreciated as I am a little lost. Cheers, Andrew
International SEO | | AndyMitty0 -
Multiple hreflang tags
I'm trying to advise on the multi country seo for a site in terms of markup. We've already decided on using sub folders rather than separate sites or subdomains due to an established link profile and good rankings in all countries. The question is in relation to the homepage. Obviously this is the page most likely to rank well in any country (the site is a .com). But can multiple hreflang tags be put on the page to say that the page targets many countries? Or would leaving the hreflang tag off allow it to just rank for all countries? Also do Yahoo and Bing follow hreflang tags? I can't find any info on this anywhere! Thanks very much in advance for any help!
International SEO | | Bdig0 -
What is the best way to rank well on both Google.co.uk & Google.com?
I am working on a website that is primarily a UK based software company but is now expanding into the US. The website is a .com site and is not geo-targeted to any specific location. Currently the site ranks well on Google.co.uk for a number of the focus keywords. We are now targeting Google.com as well to increase visibility in the USA. The site is ranking number 1 for one of the focus terms on Google.co.uk but no where to be seen on Google.com but on another term the site ranks 3rd in both Google.co.uk and .com. There are a number of other terms that rank on the first page in Google.co.uk and on the 3rd or 4th page in Google.com. The server is located in Germany and I do not want to geotarget the site to the US as I am concerned this would have a negative impact on the .co.uk ranking. The site currently has a mix of .com and .co.uk links pointing back to the site, in actual fact possibly more links actually come from US sites already. My original plan was to just focus on building links back to the target pages from US sites rather than creating a US folder on the site and geotargeting that section of the site in WMT and having to build page authority for a completely new page with no existing backlinks. But now that I have a number 1 ranking on .co.uk and the same term not ranking at all in .com as well as a postion 3 ranking for a term in both .co.uk and .com I am slightly confused as to the best options. Any help, advice, opinions would be greatly appreciated.
International SEO | | PaulSimms0 -
Ranking well internationally, usage of hreflang, duplicate country content
I'm trying to wrap my head around various options when it comes to international SEO, specifically how to rank well in countries that share a language, and the risk of duplicate content in these cases. We have a chance to start from scratch because we're switching to a new e-commerce platform, and we were looking into using hreflang. Let's assume an example of a .com webshop that targets both Austria and Germany. One option is to include both language and region in the URL, and mark these as such using hreflang: webshop.com/de-de/german-language-content (with hreflang de-de)
International SEO | | DocdataCommerce
webshop.com/de-at/german-language-content (with hreflang de-at) Another option would be to only include the language in the URL, not the region, and let Google figure out the rest: webshop.com/de/german-language-content (with hreflang de) Which would be better? The risk of inserting a country, of course, is that you're introducing duplicate content, especially since for webshops there are usually only minor differences in content (pricing, currency, a word here and there). If hreflang is an effective means to make sure that visitors from each country get the correct URL from the search engines, I don't see any reason not to use this way. But if search engines get it wrong, users will end up in the wrong page and will have to switch country, which could result in conversion loss. Also, if you only use language in the URL, is it useful at all to use hreflang? Aren't engines perfectly able to recognize language already? I don't mention ccTLDs here because most of the time we're required to use a .com domain owned by our customer. But if we did, would that be much better? And would it still be useful to use hreflang then? webshop.de/german-language-content (with hreflang de-de)
webshop.at/german-language-content (with hreflang de-at) Michel Hendriks
Docdata Commerce0 -
Delaying Redirection - Possible loss of Domain Authority?
Hey guys, I was hoping somebody might be help with my current dilema. We have a international website due to go live soon which has changed its brand name. The organisation whom we are working for want to leave the old site live for around 6 months after the new site goes live. The reason for keeping the site live is for users to be able to access many of the resources which will not be transferred over in time for when the new site goes live.The plan is to have a message on old site letting visitors know we have moved site. I'm concerned about this approach in terms of loosing some of the domain authority if the sites bounce rate starts increase due to people clicking over to the new site. Then in 6 months time when we finally redirect to the new site we might loose out on some of the domain authority. Is this something to be concerned about?The site currently has PR of 7 and Domain Authority score of 70.Cheers,Rob
International SEO | | daracreative0