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Geotargeting Location by IP Address = SEO Death

October 14th, 2007 · 25 Comments

Off Target

If you’re not a provider of local search services you may want to skip this one as it’s very inside baseball.

When I see someone blogging about geotargeting it usually refers to making sure that a site provides relevant information for the user’s physical location. However, some sites use a technique called “geotargeting location by IP address” to serve up different content to a user based on where the geotargeting software thinks the user is. The idea is that if the software thinks you’re in Tuscon then it will serve you Tuscon content. For the user it can make them feel like the page or site is tailored specifically to them.

This is all well and good except that I have seen this kind of implementation wreak havoc on site optimization, particularly on local search optimization.

The problem occurs when the geotargeting occurs on a single URL (i.e. the person in Tuscon is on the same page as the person in Fresno except each sees content specific to their location such as “best restaurants in…”). Search engine spiders tend to enter a site from a variety of different IP addresses/locations. So one day Google may think a URL is about Tuscon (because it entered via a Tuscon IP address) and another day it may think the URL is about Fresno (because it entered via a Fresno address). This causes two major issues:

1. Google will rank the page (and probably the entire site) for the last location it identified since each page can only have a single location for any given session. So the site may have content for the entire country but it will likely only rank for one city at a time (usually Mountainview, CA - home of Googlebot’s main IP address).

2. Users who click on a link from a search engine to the site and are not in the last location identified will have a jarring experience (e.g. someone traveling to Tuscon but living in Los Angeles will click on a Tuscon link in Google and might get Los Angeles content).

So if a product manager suggests you do some geotargeting by IP address you may want to make sure he/she thinks through this issue before proceeding. As you can see on Insider Pages, when we implemented geotargeting we did it only in the search box to avoid this issue.

If you are having problems with geotargeting on your site please drop me a email at localseo at localseoguide.com.

Tags: Local Data · Local Search

25 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Boris // Oct 16, 2007 at 12:12 am

    Well, How interesting… I am in Tucson and I practice Geo-Targeting for all my clients. Our work simply involves location, location, and location… Which is Tucson. Since I only work the local market, it always amazes me when I read how difficult SEO can be beyond our business model. That is why I like local so much… It’s simple and straight forward… And much easier to get great results. The downside is we have to work harder on the educational component of our marketing plan. Tucson is quit ready for SEO prime time!

  • 2 Andrew Shotland // Oct 16, 2007 at 8:41 am

    Boris I believe the town fathers of Tuscon would be proud of your boosterism.

  • 3 Hawaii SEO // Oct 16, 2007 at 4:15 pm

    It depends on how you serve the personalized content. You can serve the personalized content onto the page in an iFrame and Google shouldn’t care. Many people serve personalized content this with ad servers. There are some fairly cheap ad servers out there like AdButler which can detect geo-location and serve a pre-selected message to that segment as well as a different message per referring URL. The more segmented you get, the better it seems to work but the grater the labor requirement to manage. At some point, you might run into diminishing returns.

  • 4 Andrew Shotland // Oct 16, 2007 at 8:06 pm

    Hawaii, you’re quite right if you are talking about serving a module of content inside a page. The problem arises when you use geotargeting to set the location for the Title, H1, etc.

  • 5 October ‘07: Best Search/Marketing Posts » Small Business SEM // Oct 31, 2007 at 10:40 pm

    [...] Andrew/Local SEO Guide: Geotargeting Location by IP Address = SEO Death [...]

  • 6 Lucio Dias ribeiro // Nov 1, 2007 at 7:45 pm

    Hi Andrew, beauty of article mate!
    I’d suggest target using subpages with a piece of PHP and ASP code to solve the problem.,
    Depending on what you want to do a good solution is to use the new tool on webmaster tools “Set geographic target” allowing you to associate a particular geographic location with your site if you are targeting users within that area.
    Cheers
    Lucio Dias Ribeiro
    Marketingeasy(dot)net

  • 7 Yelp SEO Analysis: Part One // Nov 12, 2007 at 6:04 am

    [...] More City Links on the Home Page Old Home Page: They used to show links to a couple of cities and then offer a “more cities” option that takes you to a city directory. I am not certain, but I think they may have been using your IP address to show you information for your city on the homepage. For more about why this is a no-no check out Geotargeting Location by IP Address = SEO Death. [...]

  • 8 Does Close Enough Really Count? | LocalPoint - Perspectives on the Local Internet // Nov 19, 2007 at 5:01 pm

    [...] of the users having to pick/change on first visit, the 80% was a reasonable win. A recent post at http://www.localseoguide.com/geotargeting-location-by-ip-address-seo-death/ (written by one of our faithful readers, which I’m sure will spark more commentary!) has made [...]

  • 9 Victoria BC Photographer // Nov 28, 2007 at 11:46 pm

    Thats right up there with using Web 2.0 / Javascript to serve up content :) But as long as there are bad SEOs, and designer / developers we will all be in business :)

  • 10 SEMMYS // Jan 15, 2008 at 10:47 am

    [...] Geotargeting Location by IP Address = SEO Death Andrew Shotland, Local SEO Guide | 10/14/07 [...]

  • 11 How To Judge The SEMMYS // Jan 15, 2008 at 11:09 am

    [...] Geotargeting Location By IP Address = SEO Death [...]

  • 12 Understanding Google Maps & Yahoo Local Search » Nominees in Local Search category: 2008 SEMMY Awards | Developing Knowledge about Local Search // Jan 15, 2008 at 11:22 am

    [...] Geotargeting Location by IP Address = SEO Death Andrew Shotland, Local SEO Guide | 10/14/07 [...]

  • 13 Happy First Birthday To Local SEO Guide! // Oct 6, 2008 at 10:31 am

    [...] Keywords Geo targeting SEO Local Search Engine Optimization Merchant Circle Soup Nazi Yellow Pages Redesign Website [...]

  • 14 David Saunders // Oct 6, 2008 at 11:16 am

    Mmmmm :) I have a website in my native England that is ranked # 1 where I want it to and the host is US based.

    I have another site hosted in LA and shows up #1 in Charlotte, NC

    I have a blog hosted in Canada and is #1 in my area - are you guys kidding?

    Happy 1st Andrew - I always enjoy stopping by here

    David Saunders

  • 15 Andrew Shotland // Oct 6, 2008 at 11:31 am

    Thanks David. As you can see from the post I am not talking about where you host your site, but rather if you target content delivery by the location of the user, which in some cases can be a search engine bot.

  • 16 MySpace Local & SEO Failures // Apr 28, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    [...] the SEO guys over at MySpace or CitySearch did not read Andrew Shotland’s article entitled Geotargeting Location by IP Address = SEO Death in which he explains that it doesn’t usually work to your advantage to geotarget users and [...]

  • 17 TraiaN // Apr 28, 2009 at 4:55 pm

    Andrew,

    Either your opinion changed either you’re not working with Insider Pages anymore. As mentioned by you “we implemented geotargeting we did it only in the search box”.

    It looks like the title, description and keyword tags are all stuffed with geo location modifiers.

    I know this is an old artcile, but i just found it :D

  • 18 Andrew Shotland // Apr 29, 2009 at 3:36 pm

    TraiaN,

    I haven’t worked at InsiderPages for about three years now so in fact I wouldn’t be surprised if they have changed quite a bit on the site.

  • 19 56 Local SEO & Search Resources for Business | SEOptimise // Jul 3, 2009 at 7:12 am

    [...] Geotargeting Location by IP Address = SEO Death | Local SEO Guide [...]

  • 20 Local SEO // Jul 10, 2009 at 4:52 am

    [...] Geotargeting Location by IP Address = SEO Death | Local SEO Guide [...]

  • 21 SEO в България » България » Local SEO // Jul 10, 2009 at 6:40 am

    [...] Geotargeting Location by IP Address = SEO Death | Local SEO Guide [...]

  • 22 West Coast Vinyl // Sep 12, 2009 at 9:10 am

    Great article and info, we don’t have much problems with the geo targeting for our industry, and its very competitive in our area. We combine regular seo with geo target!

  • 23 Charlotte // Oct 30, 2009 at 8:29 am

    I never geotarget my seo. The only place geotargeting by IP address works is for PPC in my mind.

  • 24 Seattle SEO // Dec 11, 2009 at 10:25 am

    Interesting discussion. Although I do use some form of geotargeting for most of my clients, geotargeting location by IP address is a bad idea.

  • 25 How To Serve Local Content On Your Website | Data Driving // Jan 12, 2010 at 7:29 am

    [...] is, however, a tricky proposition for visitors and search engine spiders and so it is vital to know what implications the various geotargeting options have on visitor [...]

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