Geo

[universal4]

arz,

Any time you or anyone else needs some geoip testing, just create a thread in the public area and post a link to a page that needs the tests.

Be sure to give a brief explanation of the area of the page testers should pay attention to, and be sure to ask them to post the results they see on a specified page or even what banner they see where etc on the page.

Remind them to post the country they are testing from.

Within days you will usually have enough results that you can verify whether the link/plugin or application is working the way you want.

Rick
Universal4

Please do not ask for specific testing in this thread (start a new one) as this one should be more about the discussion of the use of geoip for links etc.

[baldidiot]

I most often do not enable server side includes on sites unless needed and wordpress runs fine.

Oh really? Didn't know that, most themes I've seen use includes that's why I was assuming it was needed.

[MMM]

I think it's working. Making a test on this page before i update the rest: http://www.slotmachinesonline.co/cas...nda-casino.php

Someone can click on the link to RP on this page? if you are from US - it should go to US casino page. Non- US should go to royal panda.

Baldidiot, Universal - thanks a lot for your help!

[Ares]

arz,

Any time you or anyone else needs some geoip testing, just create a thread in the public area and post a link to a page that needs the tests.

Be sure to give a brief explanation of the area of the page testers should pay attention to, and be sure to ask them to post the results they see on a specified page or even what banner they see where etc on the page.

Remind them to post the country they are testing from.

Within days you will usually have enough results that you can verify whether the link/plugin or application is working the way you want.

Rick
Universal4

Please do not ask for specific testing in this thread (start a new one) as this one should be more about the discussion of the use of geoip for links etc.

Rick,
It is great if we can use the help of forum members for such type of testing! I will keep this in mind for the future.

[baldidiot]

I think it's working. Making a test on this page before i update the rest: http://www.slotmachinesonline.co/cas...nda-casino.php

Someone can click on the link to RP on this page? if you are from US - it should go to US casino page. Non- US should go to royal panda.

Baldidiot, Universal - thanks a lot for your help!

Goes to RP for me.

And no worries!

[baldidiot]

Oh also MMM made me realise I'd missed a line out from the cloudways method, I forgot to define the $country_code parameter (kind of an important one):

$country_code = $_SERVER["HTTP_CF_IPCOUNTRY"];

So should look like this:

<?php
$country_code = $_SERVER["HTTP_CF_IPCOUNTRY"];
if($country_code=="US"){ 
header("Location: http://www.usacasino.com/");
} 
else 
{ 
header("Location: http://www.nonusacasino.com/");
}
?>

Couldn't edit the original post otherwise would have changed that. But the above should work now.

[dfiocch]

Sorry MMM, sorry Bald and Rick if I'm introducing in this discussion but... a "straight redirect" of users from an "expected location" to another looks a little bit tricky for me and for search engines. Search engines are becoming very susceptible to those redirects and I heard a lot of stuffs about "sneaky redirects".

So... why not just "block" the click on the source (on page) with a "warning", a "disabled button/text" or something similar?

I mean: a US visitor comes on MMM's Royal Panda review page and he/she just see "You're not allowed to play/register at this Casino" (or similar).

So, I would go with a simple function like:

<?php 

$country = $_SERVER["HTTP_CF_IPCOUNTRY"];

function check_country($code) {

if($code=='US') {
$text = '<a href="http://yourtrackinghere.com&affid=your" class="disabled">You&apos;re not allowed to play here</a>';
    } else {
$text = '<a href="http://yourtrackinghere.com&affid=your">Play at CasinoName</a>';
             }
}
return $text;
}
;?>

Then, where you want to appear text:

<?php echo check_country($country);?>

In your CSS you can disable the click event:

.disabled {
pointer-events: none; <----- you can click but nothing happens or you can set up a pop-up etc...
}

...or you can set-up a pop-up when a US visitor reach those pages. Or what you want.
You can do it also automatically; I see on the review page a list of restricted countries. If this list is rendered through an array, you could loop through this array then show a "custom text" for each country. I don't know... just to say

[baldidiot]

There's no reason for the search engines to be viewing these outgoing redirect pages, so tbh they shouldn't even know about it - I'd recommend blocking them in robots.txt anyway (didn't mention that but assumed it standard practice for external redirects).

But even if they were indexed, I can't imagine country based redirects are frowned upon - just look at any big global website that automatically redirects you to the correct country version. Say... when you visit google.com for example. For me I get redirected to google.co.uk - to me that's the the same thing. So long as google can see the same as a user from that country, you're not hiding anything.

Having said that, I do agree with you that changing the on page content is also wise, but there are some issues with doing that alone - for starters, what if the link isn't on the review page and is in a blog post, or a news item, or a slots review etc...

If you wanted to go even further, modifying the redirect code also allows you to create alternate landing pages - so a UK visitor goes to a GBP landing page, an Australian visitor goes to an AUD landing page etc..

Best practice would be to do both. On page for the users information, redirect as a backup in case traffic goes to the wrong place anyway.

[dfiocch]

There's no reason for the search engines to be viewing these outgoing redirect pages, so tbh they shouldn't even know about it - I'd recommend blocking them in robots.txt anyway (didn't mention that but assumed it standard practice for external redirects).

Correct. Blocking them in robots.txt is a "must".
But, I often see on my logs that search engines looks at those redirects anyway, also if them are blocked in robots.txt.

But even if they were indexed, I can't imagine country based redirects are frowned upon - just look at any big global website that automatically redirects you to the correct country version. Say... when you visit google.com for example. For me I get redirected to google.co.uk - to me that's the the same thing. So long as google can see the same as a user from that country, you're not hiding anything.

Here we are talking about links with rel="alternate" and hreflang="[langcode]" tags. Alternate content and/or different language, not a completely different site. The spider bot follows those links and it already knows that the next page is from the same site but with different content and language.

Let's assume we are promoting child's clothes on a specific page. We have a review and a button/link that redirects to another site (maybe e-commerce?). Now, let's assume that this redirect instead of the e-commerce (as expected) goes to a 18+ site... your site got a "flag". It's plenty of those stories around the web. This happens usually on hacked websites.

This is not the case, but I would raise the risks near "0" (zero).

For the rest, nothing to say

[MMM]

I assume doing both would be the best. On review pages I prefer to let the visitors know before they click visit and get "surprised" while make the redirect for all other pages.

Dfiochh, where the code you showed needs to enter? for example on the RP page I placed in my previous post.

[baldidiot]

Here we are talking about links with rel="alternate" and hreflang="[langcode]" tags.

Ok true, maybe bad example. But there are plenty of examples of these kinds of redirects happening - for example, Go Wild redirects UK visitors to 32Red which isn't just an alternate version of the site.

But yes, I see what you're saying.

[dfiocch]

Ok true, maybe bad example. But there are plenty of examples of these kinds of redirects happening - for example, Go Wild redirects UK visitors to 32Red which isn't just an alternate version of the site.

But yes, I see what you're saying.

Just an extreme example and as I stated this is not the case.

[dfiocch]

I assume doing both would be the best. On review pages I prefer to let the visitors know before they click visit and get "surprised" while make the redirect for all other pages.

Dfiochh, where the code you showed needs to enter? for example on the RP page I placed in my previous post.

You can use the code directly on review pages.

[baldidiot]

You can use the code directly on review pages.

I think his site's wordpress, in which case he can't use php directly on the page without making some mods. There are plug ins which allow you to run code within wordpress pages/posts though (can't recommend one I'm afraid as haven't used them).

There are also plug ins for geotargetting on page content if that's easier for you - flytonic have one: http://www.flytonic.com/product/geo-target-plugin/

[dfiocch]

I think his site's wordpress, in which case he can't use php directly on the page without making some mods. There are plug ins which allow you to run code within wordpress pages/posts though (can't recommend one I'm afraid as haven't used them).

There are also plug ins for geotargetting on page content if that's easier for you - flytonic have one: http://www.flytonic.com/product/geo-target-plugin/

Ditto

[MMM]

Sorry MMM, sorry Bald and Rick if I'm introducing in this discussion but... a "straight redirect" of users from an "expected location" to another looks a little bit tricky for me and for search engines. Search engines are becoming very susceptible to those redirects and I heard a lot of stuffs about "sneaky redirects".

Hey,

Thought about it, and although you are correct in general, I am not sure it has effect in this case.

If you use "clean" affiliate links through /visit/ or any other method that is not a direct link from every page, you already have a redirect in place. Whether the redirect goes to one place or geotargetted to various casinos doesn't matter.

P.S. Yes, since my site is on WP i can't just use php codes. I do have geo plugin but I don't like using it on every page since then I need to stop the caching (haven't managed to figure out how to set partial caching yet).

[dfiocch]

Hey,

Thought about it, and although you are correct in general, I am not sure it has effect in this case.

If you use "clean" affiliate links through /visit/ or any other method that is not a direct link from every page, you already have a redirect in place. Whether the redirect goes to one place or geotargetted to various casinos doesn't matter.

P.S. Yes, since my site is on WP i can't just use php codes. I do have geo plugin but I don't like using it on every page since then I need to stop the caching (haven't managed to figure out how to set partial caching yet).

As I stated previously, this is not the case.
I wrote it just because many years ago I had a manual penalty for a very similar "issue". Nothing more.

As @baldidiot told you, there are plugins that allow you to place raw php code snippets directly on WP pages.
I don't know so much about these plugins since my site uses a "handmade" CMS system (based on a very, very old Joomla version... around 2008 if I remember well).

[baldidiot]

As I stated previously, this is not the case.
I wrote it just because many years ago I had a manual penalty for a very similar "issue". Nothing more.

That's interesting, thanks for sharing.

In which case an intermediate step is probably wise where the redirect page displays a message with the option of continuing or seeing alternative options (rather than just straight redirecting to an alternate page).

Eg:

"Sorry, the casino you're trying to visit doesn't accept players from your country. Do you want to:

1. See a list of casinos that DO accept players from your country
2. Visit The Casino Name anyway"

[MMM]

Wouldn't it still be a redirect unless it's a message / popup on the casino page itself?

[dfiocch]

Wouldn't it still be a redirect unless it's a message / popup on the casino page itself?

Where are you based from? Which country, if I can?