Geo-targetting - best way to seperate territorial products?

[Simsi]

Hi all

I have a quandary. I represent a number of services that while once centralised, are now more territory-focused. Think French language support for French residents, German for German residents etc. While the whole range of available services is about 50, around 5 of each are country-specific.

So I want to geo-target to the French and Germans, and present the text descriptions of each service in their language. My options as I see it are:

1) keep it all on the existing domain, but tailor index page content using a Geo-targetting package, so each visitor sees a different set of content on the index page depending on where they live, in their own language.

2) Set up a sub-domain for each language, however with only 3-6 service descriptions needed, this would essentially only be one or two pages

3) Set up new domains. Same issue as above plus the sandbox I assume.

4) Offer the visitors links in their own language linking to subpages on the existing domain. The main index would remain predominantly English.

I think any of these would work for the visitor, though the geo-targetting one (no. 1) more so, obviously. I also would like Google to take onboard my transalted pages for the .fr and .de versions of Google if at all possible too. But are there knock-on effects in Google rankings with this option, or indeed the others that I may have overlooked?

Which way would you handle this? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Many thanks

Simsi

[tedster]

I prefer dedicated directories as the most trouble free approach.

1. Automated Geo-targetting can really frustrate any user whose IP address in the moment doesn't match their real language preference. I found this out as a US citizen in a London hotel that used a German ISP.

2. Subdomains seem to get blown around like leaves in the algorithmic winds. Sometimes they're treated great and other times they seem to be highly suspect.

3. New domains have all kinds of hurdles to clear before they start to really work.

[Bewenched]

While on the subject of geo-targeting what is the best way to diplay different things / ads for different parts of the country or for example .. show an ad for canadian customers and not to us customers? I know there are companies out there that will do this for you .. for a fee of course, but is there a free way to do this?

[Simsi]

Thanks Tedster.

Bewenched: look up the package Geo-IP on Google.

Cheers

Simsi

[edited by: Simsi at 10:20 am (utc) on Feb. 28, 2007]

[PHeaven]

Try the stuff from [ip2location.com...] to geo-target content, I use that to geo-target advertisements.