Hello,

Are there penalties for using GEO IP based redirection for a portion of a website? E.g. the core part of the website is redirected to a landing page based on IP where the user is directed to their country site while the blog (hosted on a subfolder on the same domain) is accessible from anywhere.

abc.com (depending on location you can either access directly or are taken to abc.com/landing-page to choose your region) but abc.com/blog is accessible from any location with no redirect and only when you click on a abc.com/url will the redirect execute.

Can this also impact paid advertising/ads being rejected due to this set up, even if campaigns don't link to these pages?

Thank you, K

Hey @jpwebagebcy thanks for your reply.

Hello,

The company I work for is about to combine 2 websites to become one on a completely new domain. E.g. xyz.com and abc.com will merge to create example.com.

However, initially they want to launch example.com and keep the old Websites live and only send 10% of traffic to the new website to test with the remainder continuing to go to the old sites.

The URL structure will be totally different on new domain, content has been rewritten but will be similar.

How problematic will this be? Or if they noindex and set redirects for the old websites pages that will be shown on the new domain will any issues be avoided?

Is it too early to use the change of address tool in search console?

Any advice is greatly appreciated!

KJ

Hello,

Currently we have 2 websites which will be merging, example: abc.com and def.com will merge and migrate to a third domain: xyz.com.

abc.com also has a translated version: abc.com/fr however that subfolder will be redirected to another website in the same language. So only the English version of abc.com will be going to xyz.com

xyz.com will have subfolders to target different regions (all English language) xyz.com/eu will target EU countries and xyz.com/global will target users outside EU countries.

A GEO IP redirect will be used so anyone outside the EU will be served xyz.com/global and anyone within the EU will be served xyz.com/eu.

There is some content overlap for yxz.com/global & xyz.com/eu so want to avoid duplicate content (can be localised but won't be totally different as it's the same product)

Challenges & questions:

1. For the migration, usually I‘d use the Change of Address tool in Google Search Console from abc.com and def.com to xyz.com. However, as the /fr subfolder on abc.com will be redirected to a different website, does this mean this will no longer work? Also, with the new domain targeting 2 different regions, does this also mean the country targeting option shouldn’t be used?

2. With the new website and subfolders targeting different regions through GEO IP redirects, I’m unsure what the best way to tell Google which version to index for which region. Would HREFLANG be enough and also resolve the duplicate content issues on the respective pages with the content overlap? Or canonicals.

I understand this set up is not necessarily the most ideal way to go but it is what is happening so I am trying to ensure the least negative impact for SEO.

Any advice or ideas are greatly appreciated!

Cheers, KJ

Thanks for your reply @seolman

Hello,

I am looking into an SEO strategy to launch a website targeting english speakers in South America. (Not all, about 6 specific countries with languages inc: Spanish, Portugese, English).

Product: online learning course in English language. Target: South America, english speaking potential students

Based on the language and cultural diversity throughout South America, as well as resources involved to create multiple ccTLD websites I am opting for a generic TLD (.lat or .com) with subfolders for country targeting (website.lat/br, website.lat/ar, website.lat.pe etc). I intend to create separate properties for each subdirectory in Google Search Console to use the geotargeting feature and use HREFLANG tags for en-br, en-ar, en-pe etc to avoid duplicate content.

Each of the subdirectories will have localised content but it will all be in English. Do you think this is likely going to work? I understand it is not ideal for SEO performance but given resources and requirements seems to be the best option.

Or would it be better to just stick to a generic TLD (website.lat) and have one english version without any geo targeting?

Thank you, Koo