Geo-blocking, Geo-redirecting, Geo-targeting and the effect it has on SE ratings.

[vdbucks]

So we've had some issues come up recently regarding Geo-blocking/redirecting/targeting our traffic and how doing so effects Search Engine ratings.

My question is simple, what affect, if any, does geo-blocking/redirecting/targeting have on search engine ratins? Do SE's like google and bing and such penalize you for blocking/redirecting/targeting access to your servers (at the webserver level) based on country?

IE. If we block/redirect China, India, Philippines and Thailand traffic from accessing our servers, do we get penalized for this?

When answering, please provide some technical data that proves or disproves the theory.

Thanks

[vdbucks]

Also, for those that have extensive experience with tgp/fhg submission sites.. do they disapprove/remove submissions if they are blocked in certain countries?

Thanks

[Klen]

I kind a doubt how you would penalized for blocking china traffic considering google pulled out of china.Not the mention how countries like china,turkey,etc should be blocked anyway since porn is ilegall there and impossible to convert.

[raymor]

Yes, it can be penalized, but most of the time it will not. On the other hand, one can show different languages in a way that Google likes, and even have the Chinese language one be a "denied" page.

Geoip is FAR from exact. I don't recall the exact numbers for country. In their city database, MaxMind claims 80% accuracy outside of the US, meaning they are wrong 20% of the time. That matters because just because you say to block a certain country, that doesn't mean that is all that's blocked.

Google penalizes what appear to be possible spam redirects, where the SE gets one page but surfers get another. You likely know that, but a quick search will turn up references. In order to detect that, Google must compare what it's normal spider gets versus what happens when they pretend not to be Google, coming from another IP. We know that's true by deduction - they MUST compare in order to catch spam redirects. If the other IP they check from happens to come back as blocked or redirected, that's when it's a problem. If blocked, Google may see the site as down. If redirected, that looks a lot like a spam redirect. Most if the time neither IP will be blocked or redirected, but it can happen.

The alternative is to act based on language rather than probable location. The browser tells you which languages the user prefers. Based on that, you can use mod_negotiation to either show a straightforward translation in the right language, or you could have the Romanian language page be completely different from the English language page. Google likes that because in that case they ASKED for different versions of the page.

Similarly for TGPs etc. - if you block Turkey a Turkish TGP will think your site is down. A US TGP owner won't know Turkey is blocked. Except that the TGP webmaster might might actually be in the UK and they are blocked because Maxmind THINKS they are in Turkey. With geoIP it's always "might have" have and "might be" - you might have blocked some people who might be in China.

[shimmy2]

no it doesn't affect your seo i still have #1 spots and i block this country and many other non english countries. i even went the extra step to block anon proxies because some of these local monkeys try to be slick and get that forbidden fruit, even though shes publicly selling her goods to all. they love gossip/rumors here. theres a service that keeps an updated live blackhole list of active proxies and cross checks all incoming traffic. you can redirect them etc. script is 200 bucks for lifetime lic but well worth it if you got troublemakers

[vdbucks]

Originally Posted by raymor

Yes, it can be penalized, but most of the time it will not. On the other hand, one can show different languages in a way that Google likes, and even have the Chinese language one be a "denied" page.

Geoip is FAR from exact. I don't recall the exact numbers for country. In their city database, MaxMind claims 80% accuracy outside of the US, meaning they are wrong 20% of the time. That matters because just because you say to block a certain country, that doesn't mean that's all that's blocked.

Google penalizes what appear to be possible spam redirects, where the SE gets one page but surfers get another. You likely know that, but a quick search will turn up references. In order to detect that, Google must compare what it's normal spider gets versus what happens when they pretend not to be Google, coming from another IP. We know that's true by deduction - they MUST compare in order to catch spam redirects. If the other IP they check from happens to come back as blocked or redirected, that's when it's a problem. If blocked, Google may see the site as down. If redirected, that looks a lot like a spam redirect. Most if the time neither IP will be blocked or redirected, but it can happen.

The alternative is to act based on language rather than probable location. The browser tells you which languages the user prefers. Based on that, you can use mod_negotiation to either show a straightforward translation in the right language, or you could have the Romanian language page be completely different from the English language page. Google likes that because in that case they ASKED for different versions of the page.

Similarly for TGPs etc. - if you block Turkey a Turkish TGP will think your site is down. A US TGP owner won't know Turkey is blocked. Except that the TGP webmaster might might actually be in the UK and they are blocked because Maxmind THINKS they are in Turkey. With geoIP is always "might have" have and "might be" - you might have blocked some people who might be in China.

Thanks for the detailed info. The only problem we'd have with some of that is, particularly blocking PI traffic is their default language is English (when it comes to browser codes); so language 'blocking' is out of the question.

Also, maxmind claims 99.8% accuracy on a country level for both country and city databases (we use the paid one).. we know first hand that the free one is pretty much garbage though.

Anyway, thanks again for the info, it's much appreciated.

[faxxaff]

I have played around with this many times and always found Google to find out about blocks and redirects sooner or later. Every time I ban or lift restrictions for a country I see massive alterations in Google traffic. They do utilize peers in various countries and data centers around the globe to search for cloaking and shady tactics.

When they find inbound links to a site from a specific country, they put more emphasis on that particular regional traffic and word is they emulate different agents to search for cloaks. In fact this means if your site is ranking high in Philippines, they will look into your Filipino traffic, but they won't care if you block Bolivia or Peru.

This traffic analysis and practice was criticized by NGOs, UNICEF and journalists many times when Google banned sites from their search that were reporting about political unrest or protests against non-democratic governments, monarchs, etc. Such instances are well documented.

[baryl]

A problem I have with language-based blocking or redirection is that you could potentially be blocking speakers of that language who live in other countries and are able to buy.

It would be a little crazy if Google punished you for blocking bad country traffic since you're pretty much just complying with local law.

[garce]

Originally Posted by KlenTelaris

I kind a doubt how you would penalized for blocking china traffic considering google pulled out of china.Not the mention how countries like china,turkey,etc should be blocked anyway since porn is ilegall there and impossible to convert.

And you can't be penalized for using Adsense on porn sites when Google allows porn sites to use adsense.

Google can block China - you can't. The legalities of porn are irrelevant when it comes to Google.

I can go to Google images right now, and get page after page of women being fucked in the ass by non-humans. Probably a shit load of videos, too. If I made a inter-species sex site, do you think I could use Adsense on it? No, but Google images would have the pics - and Adsense advertisements.

I do not understand why anyone uses anything that Google produces anymore. I guess you are all so deep up their asses you can't find your way out.

Do no evil. ROFL!

[baryl]

One thing I notice is that a lot of my traffic from those bad countries will come in through google.com rather than google.th, .id, .cn etc

Bad Geo traffic from google.com makes up a decent chunk of (maybe 15ish%) of my total Google traffic so Google is seeing 15% of people who click my site immediately bouncing right back out.
That can't be good.

I'll keep blocking China and Vietnam but I think I'm going to take the rest of the countries I had off and just deal with it on an individual IP basis.

[scottybuzz]

Guys, I know spam > but if you have foreign traffic not converting > send to http://www.message10.com and i pay you .25c a profile.