Is Geo redirection considered bad?

Geolocation service good or bad

[JasonD]

Hi everyone,

My first post here so hello and see you at the Pub Con :)

I have a question for some code that I have developed. It has been put together to assist the webmaster and the site visitor by delivering differing content based on the geographic location of a visitor.

This can be used to deliver different language versions of a page, more likely to be relevant content based on subtle differences in lingual meanings (Football in the UK and US aren't the same thing and I won't even mention fags! :) )

It also delivers price specific information in the visitor's own currency based on daily exchange rates as well as allowing the ability to offer price changes, special offers etc., to geographic regions a webmaster wants to increase their market share etc.

It provides this information either in a server side manner for the more technical webmaster or using JavaScript for the less experienced.

The question is although this is put together to assist the end user in delivering more relevant content will SE see this as cloaking and is there the potential for banning etc by them?

Thanks for your advice everyone.

Jason Duke

[edited by: Woz at 12:57 am (utc) on Aug. 22, 2003]
[edit reason] Ni Sigs Please, TOS#13 [/edit]

[volatilegx]

My frank opinion on this is that too many big sites are doing this type of thing these days for search engines to use it as a possible reason for banning. I don't have any evidence to back this up... just a gut feeling.

Your concept does meet Brett's definition of cloaking, but probably doesn't meet any search engine's definition... which usually boil down to something like "cloaking is showing different results to search engine spiders versus people for the purpose of improving search engine rankings".

Welcome to WebmasterWorld by the way :)

[PhraSEOlogy]

If you have multiple pages with almost identical content except for subtle differences, like spelling optimisation (UK) on one page and substituting optimzation (US) on the other, it could be viwed as duplicate content.

If you are delivering totally different content based on location that should be okay - i.e. a german language page to german visitors, a french language page to french visitors, etc.

[JasonD]

volatilegx and PhraSEOlogy,

Thanks for your comments and warm welcome. I tend to agree with your POV but it sure feels nice to have others confirm my thoughts :)

Woz, Sorry about the sig and thanks for the polite edit

Regards

Jason