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.

Hello!

There are a few parts to this answer; let's pull it apart a little.

• Firstly, setting geographic targeting in search console is unlikely to positively impact your rankings, visibility or traffic from the UK - this tool is more to do with helping Google to understand which users should not find your website, and to help manage brand who have websites with different areas (or multiple websites) which target different countries. That said, there's no harm in enabling it, and I'd recommend that you leave it set.

• It'd also be helpful to understand what you mean when you say that you've "set geo-targeting code at the back end of the website". Are you referring to hreflang tagging? And if so, what does your configuration look like? A partial or erroneous implementation of this can cause more problems than it solves!

  I'd also double-check what your on-page language tags/attributes look like - there are a number of signals which you can send through your language markup, which might potentially help or confuse google.

• I wonder how much of this might be a measurement issue I'd be interested to understand if you've selected the option in Google Analytics to try and filter out common bots and crawlers? It may be that much of the traffic you're seeing from India isn't human.

That rules out most of the technical and measurement challenges. The next areas I'd look are more challenging, and a bit 'bigger picture'.

• Are you using tools like Moz, Search Console and SEMrush and others to measure how and where your website is ranking for various queries? Can you see the kinds of keywords which you're visible for, which are driving this traffic?

• Is your content, brand, product and/or service relevant to a UK audience?

• Does your website provide a good experience for searchers who are looking for the content you provide; and how does that quality of experience compare to other websites who serve that audience (particularly in the UK)?

• Is your website well-constructed, managed, and generally _good _and usefu__l? Is it differentiated and distinct? Is your content well-written and helpful?

• Do other websites, blogs, communities and social audiences link to, talk about, promote and cite your website - again, particularly in the UK?

Things I wouldn't worry about:

• It doesn't really matter where your website is hosted. In an age when most hosting and routing infrastructure is cloud-based and international, this isn't really an issue. Where this _might _affect you is around speed and performance (hosting which is geographically far away from your visitor might mean a slower response) - I'd check with tools like Pingdom and WebPagetest to see how you're performing, and to spot ways to speed things up.

• I'd not worry overly about directories or submission of any kind - any effort you'd spend submitting your site to these kinds of listings could be better spent on improving your content/website/service and engaging with the communities you operate in, with an aim of encouraging people to talk about, cite and engage with your brand.

I appreciate that none of these are easy, quick wins - however, hopefully they'll provide a starting point for you to think about!

Let me know if you've any follow-up thoughts or concerns, or if anything I've signposted leads to any further questions.

Hey Alessia,

So, there are quite a few moving parts here; let's go through them one by one...

When you say that you've changed domain to siteground, what does that mean, exactly? There are a lot of nuances and a lot of potential complexity surrounding changing domains and sites; something I've written about recently on Moz. It'd be good to understand whether this was a just a domain migration (and if so, how it was managed), or something more complex or comprehensive.

If you could answer that, it'd provide a lot of useful context for helping to diagnose your problem, and working towards some options/answers.

In the meantime...

• With regards to the traffic you're still getting from Japan, I wouldn't be too concerned. It's doubtful that it's harming you, although, if it's coming through as a result of a hacked site, I'd wonder if some/all of it might actually be bot traffic - are you tracking it in Google Analytics / similar, and can you get a feel for whether it looks like normal browsing behaviour (or something a little more robotic)?
• With regards to the errors reported in Search Console, I wouldn't worry too much. If you're confident that you've resolved the issue, the error reports are just paperwork - they don't harm you in any way, and you can tick them off a little at a time. Unfortunately, there's no fast way to do this, and you can only remove 100 (I think?) per day, without using their API; but it really doesn't matter too much. Still, it's worthwhile clearing them out, because you'll want to be able to see any new or remaining issues in the future.

Hey Alessia,

Just wanted to ping you a note to let you know that I'm looking at and thinking about this, and intending to get back to you tomorrow with a structured answer and some direction.

Oh, excellent work!

Good to know for the future!

Ah, that's interesting!

We don't get Pandora over here in the UK so it's been a while since I touched it. Does it still require/run in flash? That might go some way to explaining weird referrer data...

Hey Sarah,

Just checking back to see if you're still struggling with this?

Hah!

Ah, now, that's particularly interesting. Got a link to the site handy? Might be worth exploring the implementation.

Yikes, definitely sounds like there's some exploring to be done!

I'm going to see if I can rope in some smart people to help, and get back to you.

Hey there,

My gut feeling is that this sounds like bot traffic.

Many generic systems represent themselves as safari-compatible agents, given that this is one of the main mobile web platforms.

I'd be interested in understanding how this traffic looks when you segment it by other attributes; specifically, screen resolution, colour depth and a few other of the 'system' variables in GA tend to give some good clues as to whether this is human or bot traffic. Have you explored these variables, and seen unusual patterns (such as everybody using the same browser, or the same screen resolution)?

Even if there's variation in these areas, it's worth looking at the patterns over time - there are a lot of systems which, for example, monitor site performance, and as part of this legitimately emulate a variety of browsers... However, they tend to do so consistently, e.g,. at the same time of day.

I'd definitely do some digging to see if you can see patterns which suggest that this isn't real traffic, and then, either way, work out what the next steps are.

I presume that you've enabled the setting in your GA profile to exclude common bots/agents?

Hey Alessia,

Just wanted to ping you a note to let you know that I'm looking at and thinking about this, and intending to get back to you tomorrow with a structured answer and some direction.

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.