One SEO professional was concerned about their own regional website. One section of this website targets Latin America.
They use personalization quite significantly to change certain elements on a page in order to match country specifics. These elements that are changed could be a hero image or the country currency.
One product that they offer – email marketing – has different features that are based on the market segment. This is how the vendor created it initially, and making modifications to this is out of their control.
The page is actually 90% different from what Googlebot sees.
John explained that this is likely to not be an issue. The one thing that needs to be kept in mind, however, is that Googlebot can only index what Googlebot sees.
Because Googlebot usually crawls from the United States, this means that they are going to index whatever is going to be visible to users in the United States.
If there is something unique that you are adding due to the personalization, then we are not going to see that.
But – if the things you’re tweaking are not critical to how you want to actually appear in search, then that’s just fine.
This happens at approximately the 30:18 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
John 30:18
Cool. Thanks. Let me go through some of the submitted questions. And I’ll get back to all of the raised hands, some of you raise hands, and we can see how far we can make it. Let’s see, the first one is about a regional website that has a regional section that targets Latin America.
And we use personalization to change some elements on a page to match the country’s specifics like currency or hero image. There’s one product email marketing that offers different features based on the market.
This is how the vendor has set it up, and we can’t do much about it. Through personalization, the page is basically 90% different from what Googlebot sees. We’re not trying to be shady, it’s just that this one product is different. The risks are the same. The site has one subdomain that targets Latin America and only one URL for this product, would this be an issue?
John 31:12
In practice, this shouldn’t be an issue. However, what you need to keep in mind is that Googlebot or Google can only index what Googlebot sees. And since Google usually crawls from the US, that means whatever, like would be visible to users in the US. Users without cookies, Googlebot crawls without cookies.
Whatever content would be visible there is what we would index and what your website would be findable for. So if there’s something unique, that you’re only adding with personalization, and you want your website to be found for that, then we wouldn’t see that.
However, if the content that is usually visible on the page is all you care about. And with personalization, you tweak things, and you change things in ways that are not critical to how you want to be seen in search, then that’s perfectly fine.
