Hi People I have one SEO issue that has two questions, could do with peoples helps on this please. Basically I want to block the US Ips from accessing my site but naturally do not want to block the search engine bot IPS which all have US IPs. Is there a way to do this? Secondly, if I want to block the US and France can I show a message to US users saying one thing and then another message to french users saying something else in there language? Please let me know your thoughts. Thanks Jbone
hi Jbone, the questions that you have asked are interesting ones. let me answer them one at a time. q1. Basically I want to block the US Ips from accessing my site but naturally do not want to block the search engine bot IPS which all have US IPs. Is there a way to do this? a1. honestly i have not tried doing it but theoretically if you block the IP address of USA then the search engine bot from Google.com (usa based Google bot) will not be able to access your website. but my recommendation to you to test it out, which you can easily do setting up a sub-domain name in your website eg : http://iptest.domainname.com. q2. Secondly, if I want to block the US and France can I show a message to US users saying one thing and then another message to french users saying something else in there language? a2. this can be achieved very easily. if your website is developed using php then you can use $ipaddress = $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR']; when you do it you should set register_global = Off in php.ini file. you should also get a server using api or get hold of the ip address database of both USA & France. i will prefer the api interface more. hope i am able to answer to your quarries to my best. kindest, abhishek kundu
Abhishek, thank you kindly for the advice. Sounds quite solid to me the only thing I was concerned about with this option was that I will be showing the US visitors one thing and then the Google ots sometihng else.... I was a little worried this could be considered as a form of cloaking..!?
hi Jbone, i will not advice you to do cloaking because there are people who manually review the websites. they are funded by Google. if they find out that you are using cloaking method then your website will be penalized. (just a small advice before you do cloaking). kindest, abhishek kundu
Hi Abhishek, very aware of the impact and issues of cloaking. What I am saying though is if I block the whole of the US but allow Google bots I am effectively showing users one thing and google somehting else.... would this not be a form of cloaking... that is my question.
hi Jbone, yes, your right if you block the whole of USA based visitors but allow Google bots this will definitely fall into cloaking my friend. kindest, abhishek kundu
This is what I did originally think so it makes my requirements really tough... Seems to be no way to do what I want without breaking best practice guidelines..
hi Jbone, you can have a talk with any developer who is familiar with jquery and ask that person to create a script that will display different messages. what i am aware of is that if you develop anything using jquery then Google bots can't detect it. this might solve your problem. kindest, abhishek kundu