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Robert Longfield - 5:16 pm Q: Further on Geotargetting. I run a multinational site with about 12 different languages being supported. We are implimenting geotrageting so users are directed to the appropriate language page for their country. The concern of some is that Google may penalize me... John Mueller - 5:35 pm A: I would recommend not redirecting users based on their location. This can be a bad user experience. It's better to allow a user to choose his version based on his searches. Rand: Such brazen hypocrisy! Google can geo-target its search results, geo-target its homepage, geotarget many of its other service pages, but heavens forbid anyone else do it. This is ridiculous. Robert - I'd say to simply do a quick check before you redirect your users. If their browser accepts cookies, feel free to drop one, re-direct them to the appropriate page and let your user data, feedback and analytics tell you whether or not it's the best experience or not. If the browser doesn't take cookies, drop them on an international landing page that lets them choose their country/language - this will also work well for search engine bots (which don't accept cookies), and will be able to find all of your country-targeted content.

Much of what we understand as marketing and advertising has been about selling products like chocolate caramels. It’s about emotion, association, and a happy, wonderful, smiling feel-good factor. Marketers and advertisers know that for many products and services people prefer to remain ‘blissfully ignorant.’ The Web is a very different world; a very different form of marketing and communication. Those who wish to remain blissfully ignorant do not go to the Web. You do not search for a subject on Google if you wish to remain blissfully ignorant. You go to the Web to know. Customers don’t arrive at your website to know less. They want to know more.