Google’s Matt Cutts: User Redirection Based On Location Is Not Spam

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, posted a video yesterday clearly stating the geo-location or redirecting users based on their location is not spam. Google will not consider a site that uses geo-location techniques as spam.

What Google does consider spam is when you redirect GoogleBot to a web page of content that users cannot see. That is considered spam and a form of cloaking, according to Google’s guidelines. Google expects you treat GoogleBot as a user accessing your web site from the United States.

Here is the video from Matt:

Related Stories:

• Google Says No Comment On Why Interflora Was Penalized
• After Penalizing Interflora & UK Newspapers, Google Warns Against Advertorials
• Will Google Penalize Chromebooks, Google Analytics, AdWords & Google+ For Using Advertorials?
• Google’s Chrome Page No Longer Ranks For “Browser” After Sponsored Post Penalty
• Google Now Reports “Practically 100%” Of Manual Actions
• Official: Google On How & When Ranking Penalties Are Removed
• Google Reminds Webmasters: Selling Links Can Lead To PageRank Penalty
• Matt Cutts On Penalties Vs. Algorithm Changes, A Disavow-This-Link Tool & More
• Got A Google Penalty? A Workflow For Managing Google Penalties
• 90 Days Later, J.C. Penney Regains Its Google Rankings
• iAcquire Banned From Google After Link Buying Allegations
• Google Eliminates Another Link Network, BuildMyRank.com – Just One Of Several?

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.