If Blocking a Country’s Traffic, Don’t Block Googlebot

Google’s John Mueller advises website homeowners to watch out to not block Googlebot in the event that they select to dam visitors from a whole nation.

Mueller addressed this matter twice over the previous week. It got here up as soon as through the Google Search Central website positioning hangout on April 9, and in addition got here up in a Reddit thread.

During the Search Central hangout, a website proprietor submitted a query asking Mueller about blocking a nation the place they’re receiving an abundance of bot visitors.

Here is Mueller’s recommendation.

Google’s John Mueller on Blocking Traffic From An Entire Country

Site homeowners can and do block particular person international locations once they’re receiving problematic visitors.

Living in Switzerland, Mueller isn’t personally keen on that concept, however he understands why individuals do it:

“I’ve heard some individuals block particular person international locations as a result of they see a lot of problematic visitors from particular person international locations. Personally I don’t actually like that strategy as a result of Switzerland is a type of international locations as effectively that folks are likely to say, “oh that is one other European nation, I’ll block it.”

So I don’t prefer it from a private perspective. But if you happen to’re seeing important points with visitors from a person nation then perhaps that is sensible.”

From an website positioning perspective, the important thing consideration right here is to not block Googlebot from crawling a web site.

Googlebot normally crawls websites from the US, so if a web site is obstructing visitors from the US it’s most certainly going to trigger issues.

Site homeowners can do a reverse DNS lookup to find out the place Googlebot is crawling their website from. Mueller says it’s uncommon that Googlebot would crawl a website from a number of places.

“From a search perspective we primarily crawl from the US. We don’t all the time crawl from the US, however we primarily accomplish that. And basically which means, if you could block particular person customers and particular person international locations, then you could just remember to’re not blocking Googlebot, so that you’re not blocking customers within the US for instance. So that’s sort of the search particular facet I’d be careful for there.

If you could block particular person international locations, simply ensure that’s not a nation the place Googlebot is crawling your website from. You can affirm Googlebot visitors with a reverse DNS lookup if you wish to do this. But, basically, for many web sites we might crawl from the US. I feel it’s very uncommon that we might crawl websites from different places, and we usually don’t crawl websites from a number of places.

So it’s not going to be the case that we might crawl from the US and from, I don’t know, Singapore or some random different nation. We would usually decide one nation to crawl this web site from.”

Ultimately it’s as much as website homeowners to determine in the event that they wish to block visitors from a entire nation. Sites could remedy their points with problematic visitors, however they could possibly be blocking reputable customers on the similar time.

“So primarily based on that, the necessary level for search is admittedly that you simply’re not blocking customers from the nation the place Googlebot is crawling from. If you’re blocking them from different international locations that’s sort of as much as you. It additionally signifies that you could be blocking reputable customers from these international locations so I wouldn’t simply randomly do this, however if you happen to’re seeing important points that could be an strategy.”

Hear Mueller’s full response within the video beneath:

Another Take on Blocking a Country’s Traffic

In the website positioning house there’s an attention-grabbing phenomenon the place a matter could not come up for months, after which it comes up a number of occasions in a single week. This is one such matter.

On Reddit a website proprietor posted a thread asking if they’ll scale back their rankings in a particular nation, and/or block visitors from a particular nation.

The website proprietor notes that they obtain a lot of hacking makes an attempt from a particular nation they usually wish to put an finish to that drawback.

Mueller’s recommendation is according to the recommendation offered through the Search Central hangout.

“You can’t scale back your rankings in a single nation in Google. You might set geotargeting to a completely different nation, however that’s not sure to scale back the rankings in Indonesia (and if it did, it will have an effect on all different international locations). The solely factor I’m conscious of which is kinda country-limiting is video structured information, which might have an effect on how a web page is proven in video search & the video common outcomes (assuming you might have a video on the web page).

Blocking all customers in a particular nation is doable offered you don’t block the nation the place Google is crawling your website from (I’m fairly sure we don’t crawl from Indonesia). It all the time seems like a dangerous transfer although – you could be blocking some undesirable customers, however you’re additionally blocking individuals who could be related to your website. IMO if you happen to’re anxious about hackers from one nation, you need to repair the safety points, not attempt to block that nation. It’s trivial for anybody that’s devoted to bypass a country-block.”

Source: Reddit