IP based redirection is good or bad

[seo99]

Hi,

what is the best way to redirect the traffic coming from a specified country (IP) without harming the search engine rankings:

1. Track the IP address and do the redirection automatically to the appropriate domain. For example, traffic coming from UK will be automatically redirected to .co.uk domain

2. Give user an option to click and move to the specified domain. For example, a UK flag present on the main domain asking user to move to .co.uk website.

any help would be highly appreciated!

Thanks

[tedster]

I prefer not to do IP redirection. It seems to me like an unnecessary complication and full of pitfalls. But I also know many companies continue to like the idea. So I seem to be in the minority ;(

Here's one pitfall: regular googlebot crawls come from the US - so it won't get redirected to see other versions. Also, unless executed flawlessly, IP redirection can really frustrate users who are traveling, or expats, or researching for another country, or using a German ISP from a UK hotel, etc, etc.

If you do redirect, then at least make sure there is a regular click path to the other country versions for search engines to crawl. And definitely make sure that each country version of a page has its own unique URL.