Using geolocation to redirect traffic to international domains?

[onlinesource]

I have a .com store and .co.uk store. Currently the .com store has a link that says, VISIT OUR UK STORE and the .co.uk store has a link that says VISIT OUR USA STORE. Is this good enough?

I've also recently discovered plugins that will redirect traffic using Geolocation to a specific url or page. I was going to redirect USA traffic on co.uk site to USA site (leave all other traffic as is) and obviously move UK traffic on my .com site to my UK site.

Currently, in my Google Webmaster Tools account, my UK site settings sy that "Your site's domain is currently associated with the target: United Kingdom". The .com site is not targeting any country.

My question is, if the .com site defaults to all countries including the UK would that effect how Google sees my UK site? For this reason I was thinking about pushing USA traffic (or any non-UK traffic) off my UK site via Geolocation or is GWT settings good enough?

[rainborick]

Your .com site won't compete with your .co.uk site. Things could get a bit muddled for the .com, depending on where it's hosted. For generic TLDs (like .com, .net, .org, .info, etc.), lacking any explicit geographic targeting via Webmaster Tools, Google will set the .com's geo-location based on the IP address of the server that hosts the site. There can be other influences like the origins of the incoming links to the site, but overall, it's the server's physical location that takes priority.

So, if the .com is hosted in the UK and you want to target the US, I'd strongly consider setting the Geographic Target in WMT.

[not2easy]

Yes, set the geographic targeting in the GWT account, but please don't redirect using geolocations. If there is a clear link to go to the preferred version that is a better user experience than automatically deciding which store a visitor sees. It is not unusual to be traveling and order or shop online and geolocation redirects can make that difficult.

[Leosghost]

Another vote against redirecting via Geo locations..

Some countries have large permanent populations of people who are not fluent readers of the national language..their browsers will be probably be set to their own language..you could "sniff" for that, and initially point ( redirect ) them to a page in their browser language..But still leave them the choice of changing language by for example clicking on a flag icon..

Save their choice if you want via a cookie ( if so make it relatively short life cookie or resettable by them )..Redirect them to the same page that they landed on ( but in their preferred language ), don't make them begin again at the "home page"..They won't thank you for it..

I have some sites that are only geared towards France, and to customers in France, so they are in French, but every page has a flag icon ( or flag icons if I 'm offering more than one alternative language ) on every page, leading to the same page in their language choice..

I hit an example of what not to do just this week when looking up SEMRush ( after it was mentioned by Netmeg )..Their SERP was in English ( the search engine reads my browser's preferred language setting ) ..But when I hit their home page, it instantly Geo-redirected me to a French language page..( I read French perfectly, so to me that is not a problem, but I cannot / could not/ will not recommend them to anyone who lives in France and is not a fluent French speaker..

SEMRush gives no way to escape their Geo-redirect ( other than by using a proxy in an English speaking country )..no "flags", no "buttons"..So..No Sale ..if you live in France and don't read French fluently..

There are approximately 600,000 Anglophones* ( native English speakers ) living in France..There are quite a lot of them have their own businesses..and a substantial number of English speaking businesses offering webdesign to them..They won't be able to get to the page in English to buy SEMRush's services..

A surprising mistake ( for a company dealing with webmasters )..and a lot of money being left on the table merely by assuming that every one in France who might be interested in their services, is a fluent French speaker and would only want the French version of a product / service that if you land on their site from the USA or the UK, you will see that they offer in English..

*The majority of English speaking foreigners here do not read French fluently, but do own their own homes,( most French rent ) and have a higher "net worth" and disposable average income than the average French person..SEMRush are probably not the only ones making this basic error, but others , such as Godaddy also have a French presence now, offer their services in French to France, and "sniff" browser language and allow visitor language choice via buttons on their site..

[Kendo]

Google will set the .com's geo-location based on the IP address of the server that hosts the site

Don't you just love dealing with retards? It might work for users but hardly ever for hosted sites. We maintain servers in the US, Singapore, Australia and the UK and the non-english sites are not where Google thinks they should be. Two of the networks that we use, in US and Singapore, are popular in most countries because of their excellent service, connectivity and economy.

[not2easy]

Google and Bing both do geolocation and I really dislike using them for that reason. Why should I have to manually set my language preferences every time I visit those sites? It is in my browser's settings for a reason.

[rainborick]

Keep in mind that geolocation and language are two distinct issues. While you're going to occasionally run into crossover issues, the search engines deal with them separately and try to match the user with appropriate websites using both factors.

As far as setting a site's geo-location by IP address, Google's been doing it for at least the last ten years and Bing's been doing it as long as I can remember. And, of course, both of them allow you to select a geographic target on generic TLDs through their webmaster consoles. It's only been within the past 5 years or so that I've seen Google make geolocation a little fuzzy by taking other factors like incoming links into consideration, so a site can rank outside of its primary geographic target.

The most complicated language issues I ever face are 'en' vs. 'en-us' vs. 'en-gb', so I've never had to look at browser settings, etc. But I've often seen folks complain, so I know there can be problems.

[onlinesource]

The UK site is hosted in the UK. The .com site is actually hosted in the Western Europe. Both sites use a content delivery network and distributed domain name server, but does that help? Since I GeoTraget the UK on the .co.uk site, should I then GeoTarget the USA on the .com site? The only problem is, if I geoTarget a specific country, doesn't hurt my ability to rank well in other countries like Canada, Australia, etc? I would like my .com site to be my main site for all countries and .co.uk to be for UK specifically.

It also seems like once I start this, it's either all or nothing! Meaning I get a domain for each country and target each one or do one for all, because otherwise it just creates a mess.

A noticed today that a lot of stores like Amazon host all of their countries on one server, but use multiple storefronts, so they can share products across multiple stores but sell it in difference currency or languages for specific countries.

[rainborick]

Yes, if you set a geographic target in WMT, you will probably hurt your rankings elsewhere. As I say, without that setting, Google primarily relies on the geographic location of the server, but that doesn't mean you wouldn't rank at all in other countries. For example, your .com site hosted in Western Europe likely has incoming links from several different countries, so I would expect you to see some regional search engine traffic in addition to the actual host country.

Google has some good advice for multi-regional sites [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com] that you ought to look at. Every site is a little different, so I'd be inclined to to a test by setting up a subdomain on your .com site and set it's geographic target in WMT to a country you'd like to target. Give the subdomain some unique content, but you can let it essentially mirror the parent domain without duplicate content issues. You can even use a subdirectory if you'd like to keep things as simple as possible. But if you're getting enough traffic now that a CDN makes sense, I'd expect you to do well with this approach.

[phranque]

My question is, if the .com site defaults to all countries including the UK would that effect how Google sees my UK site? For this reason I was thinking about pushing USA traffic (or any non-UK traffic) off my UK site via Geolocation or is GWT settings good enough?

from my understanding, this is the preferred configuration in your case and any duplicate content urls from the gTLD (.com) are filtered out of the google.co.uk index.