Geotargeting
Geotargeting is the method of determining the location of a user and serving different content to visitors dependent on where they are viewing the site from. To find out more about how search engines crawl and index this geotargeted website content, along with recommendations and insights from Google, we have compiled common questions and answers within our SEO Office Hours recaps below.
For more on geotargeting and international website best practices for SEO, check out our additional guides:
An SEO’s Guide to International Site Architecture
Getting Your International Website Structure Right
ccTLDs Can Target Other Countries Using Hreflang But Not Geotargeting
ccTLDs can use hreflang to target pages to different countries but they can’t geotarget those pages for other different countries.
IP Addresses Are No Longer Used For Geotargeting or Local SEO
Server IP addresses used to be a signal in the early days of Google’s geotargeting. Now Google uses ccTLD, generic TLD, hreflang, as well as settings in Google My Business and Google Search Console in combination to infer geotargeting information which is much more useful than a single IP.
Google Requires Distinct Section on Site For Geotargeting to be Understood
Google requires that websites using geo-targeting have a dedicated section on the site for specific territories such as a separate subdirectory or subdomain.
Country-Specific Content Requires Different Domains, Subdomains or Subdirectories
For country targeting, Google requires a clear distinction between country-specific content by using separate domains, subdomains or subdirectories.
Geo-targeting is Only Way International & Local Sites Separated in Web Search
Beyond geo-targeting, Google web search doesn’t have anything that tries to recognise international versus local sites.
Google Automatically Applies Geotargeting to ccTLDs
Google will automatically apply geotargeting to ccTLDs meaning you will get a slight boost in rankings for searchers in that country.
Google Found No Additional Value Gained From Crawling Outside US
Google have tested crawling from different countries but decided this didn’t provide any additional value, except from a very small number of locations. If Google were to crawl sites from many different countries this would put more stress on a site’s server.
Geo-targeted Sites Should Feature Content Which Isn’t Location-Specific
Googlebot crawls from California, so if you make all of your content geo-specific then it will only ever see content about California and won’t realise you have a global website, which can affect rankings for other locations. John recommends having a significant part of your site that’s general. This also applies for personalisation.
Changing Geotargeting From Country-Specific to Global Can Impact Local Rankings
Changing geotargeting in Search Console from country-specific to global will remove any local benefit Google is applying when users in that country search locally relevant terms and rankings may change subtly.
Video Sitemaps Can Specify Countries Where Content is Available
With a video sitemap you can define which countries your content is available, which is used for video search results.