IP Redirects and SEO

Marketing
1

Hi, we are a large ecommerce site and we will soon set up IP redirects on our .COM site to send visitors to .FR, .DE, etc based on their physical location. I have an important related question that we are debating:

Is it better to do a conditional 301/302 or a javascript based redirect?

Thanks in advance for any advice.

2

I would certainly not use a javascript redirect

  1. It doesn’t work for users who have javascript disabled/a browser that is not capable of javascript
  2. The user needs to download a portion of the website before being redirected. An HTTP header to indicate redirection is faster (instant redirection instead of waiting until the javascript is loaded) and also saves (some) bandwidth.

As for 301 or 302 I’m not sure which one you should use in this particular case.

3

Thanks for your help. We’ve discarted Js in favour of HTTP headers. There is still some doubt whether ot not to use a 301 or 302. Personally I am not in favor of this option because I think it may have some nagative SEO impact. Maybe somehow the link juice gets redirected too when the 301 is conditional…??

4

Whichever way you do this (and I agree with Scallio that it should be done via HTTP headers, not Javascript), it’s important to give people a way to go to the .com version of the site - eg, as Google do, have google.com/ncr so that people from any country can access the .com site

5

Could you continue your seo effort throughout this process?