GeoIP - Redirect all but target country

[cottamg]

My client would like to redirect all non UK traffic from their UK site to their main group site.

I am intending to use a .htaccess redirect, like this:

RewriteCond %{ENV:GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE} !^GB$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.group.com$1 [R,L]

I have tested the redirect at it works fine.

My question is if I put this in place would it have any negative SEO impact on the UK site?

[joony2008]

Hello, Thanks for this, and this is an old thread but I had a very smilar question to this.

What do you exactly mean by indexation problems?

Do you mean the Google refuse to crawl UK site in this example? So they don't index UK webpages? I don't think this make sense? or I am getting a wrong idea.

I am just wondering where you found this information. I did my homework and SEOmoz ppl talked about "cloaking" video by Matt Cutt and He says GeoIP redirecting is fine? I am no where close to an expert but had to ask this question because I was trying to do the same thing,

http://www.seomoz.org/q/redirecting-root-domain-to-subdirectory-by-ip-addresses-country-specific

Thank you!

[Hannah_Smith]

You're welcome

[cottamg]

Many many thanks Rebecca!

The quality of this answer makes this years subscription worthwhile, and we are only a month in.

Must have taken you some time, it is much appreciated.

Cheers, Gary.

[Hannah_Smith]

Hi Gary,

This sort of redirect can cause indexation problems.

Typically Google crawls from the US -  and as such the bots may only see your US content - no UK content = no UK rankings - so this isn't a solution which I'm keen to recommend.

If you really need to implement something like this, you could try doing what cheapflights.com do. For example if you visit cheapflights.com from a UK IP they redirect you to this international choice page -

http://www.cheapflights.com/workers/profile-select.aspx?sref=CFUK&redirect=GeoIP&geoip=GB&cfref=CFUS&spt=Home&rp=/:

This solution allows the bots to crawl both versions of the sites, plus it allows users to select which version of the site they wish to see.

You might also consider one of the following -

a) Don't do any IP redirection, but upweight the links to the international sites so that there is a clear route for users to find the right version of the site.

b) Use IP detection to show a JavaScript overlay suggesting non-UK users might want to visit the main group site - but don't actually redirect them.

I hope this helps

Hannah