Stop Google indexing entire website based on search location
-
OK - bear with me...
We have a .co.uk website. However, we only want it indexing in the US Google and NOT the UK Google.
Is there a way of configuring this in Search Console /Webmaster tools?
-
Hi Anthony,
There's unfortunately no setting in Google Webmaster Tools for this.
Your best bet is to use IP detection logic to either totally block (return an error status code and no content) or serve a simple "our content is not available in your country" error page to all requests from IP addresses in the UK.
You can do this by building your own reference database or using a service - there's also some freeware). (FYI: anyone on a proxy network can get around this.)
Google does use "locale-aware" crawling, including appearing to crawl from other countries than the US (most likely through a distributed computing network), and the UK is likely high on the priority list for that.
Google should pick up on this over time and stop including your pages in search results. But it may not be immediate.
Best,
Mike
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
-
Can't get Google to index our site although all seems very good
Hi there, I am having issues getting our new site, https://vintners.co indexed by Google although it seems all technical and content requirements are well in place for it. In the past, I had way poorer websites running with very bad setups and performance indexed faster. What's concerning me, among others, is that the crawler of Google comes from time to time when looking on Google Search Console but does not seem to make progress or to even follow any link and the evolution does not seem to do what google says in GSC help. For instance, our sitemap.xml was submitted, for a few days, it seemed like it had an impact as many pages were then visible in the coverage report, showing them as "detected but not yet indexed" and now, they disappeared from the coverage report, it's like if it was not detected any more. Anybody has any advice to speed up or accelerate the indexing of a new website like ours? It's been launched since now almost two months and I was expected, at least on some core keywords, to quickly get indexed.
Technical SEO | | rolandvintners1 -
Google Search Console - Sitemap
Hi all, Quick question. I'm trying to update my sitemap via Google Search Console using a sitemap.xml file that I've created with ScreamingFrog. However, when trying to submit it, it seems that Google only allows sitemaps that are located at a path within your domain (i.e. www.example.com/sitemap.xml) as opposed to being able to directly upload a sitemap.xml file.Is there any way that I can easily upload my sitemap.xml file? Or is there any easy way that I can upload the file to a path on my domain so I can upload via the URL?Any insight would be much appreciated!Best,Sung
Technical SEO | | hdeg0 -
How preproduction website is getting indexed in Google.
Hi team, Can anybody please help me to find how my preproduction website and urls are getting indexed in Google.
Technical SEO | | nlogix0 -
Why is Google not indexing my site?
I'm a bit confused as to why my site just isn't indexing on Google. Even if I type in my brand name, my social channels rank and there's no evidence of my website. I've followed all of the advice I've read and gone into webmaster tools and got the Wordpress yoast plug-in but nothing seems to be making a difference!One thing I've noticed, in Google Webmaster Tools it says "Couldn’t communicate with the DNS server." in site errors. I've called GoDaddy and they said that everything is fine. A bit frustrating. Trying to work out what my next steps should be but feeling a bit lost to be honest! Any help GREATLY appreciated!
Technical SEO | | j1066s0 -
Local Google vs. default Google search
Hello Moz community, I have a question: what is the difference between a local version of Google vs. the default Google in regards to search results? I have a Mexican site that I'm trying to rank in www.google.com.mx, but my rankings are actually better if I check my keywords on www.google.com The domain is a .mx site, so wouldn't it make more sense that this page would rank higher on google.com.mx instead of the default Google site, which in theory would mean a "broader" scope? Also, what determines whether a user gets automatically directed to a local Google version vs. staying on the default one? Thanks for your valuable input!
Technical SEO | | EduardoRuiz0 -
Quality Issues: My blog is blocked on Google Search Engine
Hi Webmasters, I got an email from google team. The email is included below. **Google Webmaster Tools: Quality Issues on http://abcdblogger.com/**August 8, 2012 Dear site owner or webmaster of http://abcdblogger.com/, We've detected that some of your site's pages may be using techniques that are outside Google's Webmaster Guidelines. If you have any questions about how to resolve this issue, please see ourWebmaster Help Forum for support. Sincerely, Google Search Quality Team My blog is completely blocked on Google Search engine. I removed all existing posts and reinstalled a fresh version of wordpress and wrote a good article. I redirected all broken links my homepage with a 301. After making those changes I submitted a reconsideration request to Google, But they declined it. I doubt that the reason for blocking could be due to the backlinks pointing to my domain. I think Google's Disavow Tool help me to remove low quality backlinks, But how can I sort low quality backlinks using Opensite Explorer? If possible can you create a text file with all possible low quality links, So that I could submit it using Google Disavow Tool. Thanks.
Technical SEO | | hafiskani0 -
Google Search Parameters
Couple quick questions. Is using the parameter pws=0 still useful for turning off personalization? Is there a way to set my location as a URL parameter as well? For instance, I want to set my location to United States, can this be done with a URL param the same way as pws=0?
Technical SEO | | nbyloff0 -
Why Google did not index our domain?
Hi, We launched tmart 60 days ago and submitted to google, bing, yahoo 20 days later. But google had never indexed our website still when yahoo indexed it in one week. What we have checked or tried: 1. We got 20~50 inlinks in one month and now 81 inlinks via yahoo site explorer. 2. This domain has registered for 13 years and we purchased it from sedo last year. We
Technical SEO | | zt673
did not find any problems from domain archive pages. 3. Page similar: the homepage is 50% similar to one of our competitors when we just launched.
So we adjusted the page structure and modified the content one month later and decreased the similarity to 30% (by tools from webconfs.com) 4. Google Robots: googlebot crawled our website every day after we submitted for indexing.
We opened GWT account for it and added the xml sitemap last week. GWT said nothing
was wrong except the time of page loading. Our questions: Why google did not indexed our website? What should we do? Thanks, wu0