Geo Redirect Docs

Getting Started

How it works?

The geo redirect product allows you to redirect a visitor from one website or page to another website or page based on their geolocationcountry, state/region, city, latitude-longitude-radius zone and IP address.

Redirection can be applied throughout your website, a particular sub directory of your website or an individual page. You can create multiple location segment - redirect URL pairs so visitors from different locations can be redirected to different websites.

An optional permission popup can be used to request a visitor's permission before they are redirected. The visitor can opt to stay on the current page if they wish. The popup also has the ability to 'remember' the visitor's selection for auto redirection on next visit.

Key features

Quick start guide

Guides

One way geo redirection

Example of a one-way geo redirect setup where one domain is redirected to another. If you own the other domain, it is recommend to use a multi-domain redirect setup shown in the next section.

https://example.com --> https://example.co.uk (UK visitors)
https://example.com --> https://example.ca (Canadian visitors)

Multi-domain geo redirection

Example of a multi-domain geo redirect setup where each domain is redirected to the others. This is the ideal method to setup Geo Redirection when you own multiple domains. It helps search engine crawlers from different countries understand the region specific purpose of each site.

https://example.com --> https://example.co.uk (UK visitors)
https://example.com --> https://example.ca (Canadian visitors)

https://example.co.uk --> https://example.ca (Canadian visitors)
https://example.co.uk --> https://example.com (Outside UK and Canada)

https://example.ca --> https://example.co.uk (UK visitors)
https://example.ca --> https://example.com (Outside UK and Canada)

Same site geo redirection

If your site has specific subfolders for each region, then you can make use of same-site geo redirection where each folder redirects to each other. The tracking code integration will depend on if the sites are operate as separate entities or under the same entity.

https://example.com --> https://example.com/uk (UK visitors)
https://example.com --> https://example.com/ca (Canadian visitors)

https://example.com/uk --> https://example.com/ca (Canadian visitors)
https://example.com/uk --> https://example.com (Outside UK and Canada)

https://example.com/ca --> https://example.com/uk (UK visitors)
https://example.com/ca --> https://example.com (Outside UK and Canada)

Allowing visitors to 'switch' between sites

Often when using Geo Redirection between sites, you may need to allow your visitors to switch between sites. This is specifically true when your visitors are travelling. To allow site switching:

• Create your own navigation links or drop down that link to each of the sites
• Use our referrer whitelist feature to disable the redirect if the visitor is coming from one of your other sites

Same site redirection with query string only

https://example.com --> https://example.com?lang=fr (FR visitors)
https://example.com --> https://example.com?lang=de (DE visitors)

Some website utilize query strings to inform the server that language change our country change is required. Often this only needs to be done on the first visit.

E-commerce multi-country geo targeting

If you are looking to sell internationally, using separate ecommerce stores to target each region is a great strategy to boosting conversions.

• Checkout our e-commerce geo targeting guide to selling internationally
• Setup separate e-commerce stores for each region
• Use multi-domain geo redirection to route traffic to the correct store based on their location
• Make use of hreflang tags in each store to maximise SEO benefits

Geo Redirect Types

Automatic geo redirect

Automatic redirection instantly redirects a visitor as soon as they open your site. This provides a seamless redirect experience to the visitor and helps maximize overall conversion rate.

Automatic redirects can however be followers by search engine crawlers and thus it can affect SEO. Is important to utilize hreflang tags to identify the country variant pages or sites and also make use of two-way redirection so that search crawlers can understand the purpose of geo redirection.

Popup geo redirect

Popup redirection will display a popup prompting the visitor to 'switch' to a region specific site. This is useful when you would like to allow the user to decide if they wish to be redirected.

Popup based redirection is not followed by search engine crawlers and thus does not affect SEO.

Popup redirect designs

Choose from variety of pre-made designs styles, buttons, colors and more to suit your website design. All designs a mobile friendly (responsive). Below are a list of design options provided:

• Standard popup, popup with image, top announcement bar, bottom anncounment bar
• Single button with x, double buttons, wide buttons
• Alter button color, background color, text color
• Alter font sizes, line spacing, line height
• Alter border radius, button radius
• Add a logo image
• Enable a screen overlay to avoid clicking

Standard popup:

Popup with image:

Bottom anncounment bar:

Top anncounment bar:

Button and text example combinations:

Countdown timer redirect

Set a timer (in seconds) to automatically redirect the user if a choice is not made in the redirect popup.

Remembering user selection

This option allows you to remember the user selection made. If the user selects to be redirected, they will automatically be redirected the next time they visit your website. If the user selects not to be redirected, they will not be redirected or shown the popup the next time they visit your site.

Use Cases

Ecommerce

Selling in different countries using multiple domains? Geo redirection is a widely used technique to route traffic to the correct store front based on a visitor's country. Check out our e-commerce guide on multi-country stores and why it is beneficial to use separate stores for each country.

Software as a service (SaaS)

Take advantage of international currencies by selling SaaS in a local currency. Geo redirection is a great technique widely used to show country relevant pricing pages.

Directory & real estate

Running a state based directory or real estate website? Geo redirection can route traffic to city or state based pages for optimal visitor experience.

Multi-regional businesses

Have a business that services multiple countries? Take advantage of country specific domains and use Geo Redirection to route traffic to the relevant country domain.

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is all about maximizing every traffic visit or click. Boost conversions by routing traffic to country, state or city relevant offers.

Location Targeting

How location segments work?

Each location segment is a group of locations.

• No limit on number of location segments you can create
• Each location segment can contain any number of countries, states, cities, radius-zones or IP addresses
• Use 'equal to' or 'not equal to' to create a complex location segment

Adding locations

Use our location popup to add continents, countries, states, cities, radius zones & IP addresses.

Continent redirection

A continent is a group of countries. Selecting a continent will add all countries in the continent to the location segment.

Country redirection

Country targeting matches a visitors country. The accuracy of country detection is around 99%.

State/region redirection

State/region targeting matches a visitors state/region within a country. The accuracy of state/region detection is around 70-90%.

City redirection

City targeting matches the visitors city which is normally a major city in a state/region or country. The accuracy of city detection is around 70%.

Radius redirection

Radius detection allows you to specify a latitude and longitude coordinates along with a radius in kilometers to capture any visitors in that zone. Note that we recommend a minimum of 50km radius as IP location normally points to the center of a major city and not to the exact location of the visitor.

IP address redirection

It is possible to redirect or exclude specific IP addresses and IP ranges. This may be useful for redirecting visitors from a specific known company office or even excluding your own company or employees from being redirected.

Including & excluding locations

You can include (equal to) or exclude (not equal) to locations to create a complex location segment. For example you may want to redirect everyone in United States, except for California:

Bulk importing locations

Bulk importing locations allows you to easily manage your locations in a csv file for repeated use.

• CSV bulk import format
• CSV bulk import country files

Redirecting 'all other' locations

This option if enabled allows you to redirect any other location not captured in other location segments. This is useful if your website is a dummy site and you need to redirect everyone to another website.

Page Targeting

Redirecting all pages

https://example.com* --> https://example.co.uk

Most often all pages of a site need to be geo redirected. Select this option to redirect all pages of your site including all subfolders. Note that subdomains won't be redirected as they are considered a different website.

Redirecting selected pages

https://example.com --> https://example.co.uk
https://example.com/products* --> https://example.co.uk/products*
https://example.com/collections* --> https://example.co.uk/collections*

In some cases, you may wish to redirect only selected pages of a site such as your product pages. Selecting this option will allow to to specify the pages to be redirected in the next step.

Redirecting a single page only

https://example.com/contact --> https://example.com/contact-uk*

If you only need to redirect a selected page of a site, use this option.

Customized page mapping

https://example.com/products* --> https://example.co.uk/shop*
https://example.com/collections* --> https://example.co.uk/catalog*
https://example.com* --> https://example.co.uk*

If you are redirecting all pages of a site and the site you are redirecting to has a different page URL structure. Use this feature to customize the 'from' and 'to' redirect rules.

Bulk import page mappings

If you have a large number of page mappings, they can be easily imported from a csv file. The first column of the csv file should contain the 'Page URL' and the second column the respective 'Redirect URL'

Excluding selected pages

In certain cases you may need to exclude selected pages from being redirect. For example you may want to exclude any blog pages from being redirected as the blog is common across all regional sites.

Passing page paths

https://example.com/{product/hat} --> https://example.co.uk/{product/hat}

Passing sub page paths automatically transfers the page URL onto the redirect URL. This is ideal if both sites have the same URL structure.

Passing query strings

https://example.com?utm_source=facebook_ads --> https://example.co.uk?utm_source=facebook_ads

Passing query strings will automatically transfer any URL query parameters onto the redirect URL. This is useful for maintaining any tracking parameters.

Whitelisting

IP address whitelisting

Whitelist an IP address or IP range to prevent that particular device or network of devices from being redirected. This is useful when you need to prevent yourself or employees from being redirected.

Referrer source whitelisting

This will disable the redirect if the visitor is coming from a specific website. For example if you have two sites: example.com and example.ca, you can disable the redirect if a visitor from Canada clicks on a link to example.com when they are browsing example.ca

This lets your visitors 'switch' sites without getting forced redirected.

Query string whitelisting

You can disable the redirect if a specific query parameter is found in the URL. This is useful when you need to disable redirection if traffic is coming via an ad. For example you can disable the redirect if the text 'facebook_ad' is found in URL: example.com?utm_source=facebook_ad

Bots & crawlers

By default bots & crawlers are not whitelisted and will follow the redirects. They are however not counted in the analytics and they do not consume any quota. To explicitly exclude bots from being redirected, you will need to add a parameter (bots=disallow) to the tracking code.

Original sample tracking code:

Tracking code with bots=disallow added to the request:

SEO

SEO with geo redirection

When implementing Geo Redirection in your sites specifically automatic redirection, it is important to follow best practices to ensure search engine crawlers understand the purpose of the geo redirect.

Learn more about SEO and geo redirects

In summary. the SEO best practices are:
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HREFLANG tags

HREFLANG tags are essential in allowing search engine crawlers to understand which country/language each site or page is targeted to. It helps avoid getting caught out for duplicate content and also allows crawlers to understand the purpose of implementing geo redirection.

Site structure

Having the correct site structure is essential in making the best of geo redirection and SEO. There are three main site structures you can adopt.

Top level domains

Having dedicated top level domains for each country provides the maximum SEO benefit as search engines favor country specific domains in search rankings.

Pros:

• Best for SEO and country level search engine rankings
• Increases visitor trust in a targeted country
• Easy to setup and manage geo redirection
• Separate sites allow for location relevant products, information and user experiences

Cons:

• Country extensions may not be available
• higher cost from purchasing and renewing new domains
• higher cost due to maintaining separate websites

Subdomains

Having specific subdomains offers the second best method for creating a multi-site setup.

Pros:

• Easy to setup and manage geo redirection
• Separate sites allow for location relevant products, information and user experiences
• Easy to create new subdomains without any cost

Cons:

• Does not provide maximum SEO benefit for country level search rankings
• higher cost due to maintaining separate websites

Subpages

This is the least favorable method of running a multi-site setup for geo redirection unless each of the sub-folders is a separately managed site or the site itself only has a few pages.

Pros:

• Cost effective as only a single site and domain needs to be maintained
• Does not provide maximum SEO benefit for country level search rankings
• Easy to create new subdomains without any cost

Cons:

• Geo redirect rules can be complex
• Does not provide maximum SEO benefit for country level search rankings
• Difficult to customize content, products, information & user experience in a single site

Accuracy & Limits

IP location accuracy

Our Geo Redirect utilizes IP based location to determine visitor location. IP based location has the following accuracies:

• Country (99%+)
• State/Region (70%-90%)
• City (70%+)

We do not recommend using IP based location for targeting ZIP codes or specific areas within a city

Redirect speed

Our servers respond in between 70ms to 300ms depending our your customers location. If our tracking code is placed at the start of your header (i.e. the first script in your page), you can expect an almost 'instant' redirect.

Page loading speed

Our Geo Redirect tracking code is an asynchronous type script which means it does not prevent other resources from loading while our script loads. Hence it can be said that our tracking script does not increase overall load time of a page.

Limitations

When using IP based geo redirection, the following limitations should be taken into account:

• Location detection is not 100% accurate
• Location can be altered using a VPN or proxy
• As our service is integrated using a JavaScript snippet, disabling JavaScript in a browser can bypass redirection

Incorrect location detection

If your location is detected incorrectly, there is not much we can do but to wait and hope your IP resolves to the right location over time.

Check where you are being detected by visiting My IP Location.

Ad Blockers

Ad block plugins are utilized by a certain percentage of people and they normally block third party tracking tools when put in privacy mode. This can result in these plugins blocking our JavaScript tracking code snippet.

We continually monitor ad blockers and if our API is blocked by them, we issue a new tracking code. Emails are sent out when our tracking code is updated.

Pricing

Free trial

We offer a full feature 14 day free trial so you can try our Geo Redirects on all your websites. All features are included and there are no limits on the number of Geo Redirects you can create or websites you can use them on.

Paid plans quota

After the trial, you will need to subscribe to a paid plan based on your usage. Our paid plans provide 'page views' quota where each 'page view' is a page visit of your website running our Geo Redirect tracking code.

• One page view is equal to one page visit of your site
• Pageviews are not the number of unique visitors in your analytics
• You can restrict the Geo Redirect to run on only specific pages
• Page views that are not redirected still counted as we have to detect the page visit location
• Bots and crawlers will not consume pageviews

Learn more by visiting our 'What are page views' guide

Paid plan features

Our paid plans allows you to use our Geo Redirects with all features included with the only limitation being the number of page views as per the plan quota:

• Create unlimited number of Geo Redirects
• Use on unlimited number of domains
• Redirect unlimited number of locations
• Access to all features

Monthly vs. yearly

With yearly quota plans, the entire year's worth of quota is provided up-front almost like a prepaid system. There are no monthly quota limits, hence there is less wastage when you have varying amounts of monthly traffic. The yearly quota plans are also discounted at 20%.

If a yearly quota plan runs out before a year, you can always 're-subscribe' to start a new billing cycle and get a fresh set of quota.

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Running out of quota

When your pageviews quota balance reaches 0%, your geo redirects will stop working however your website will continue to work as it did previously without the geo redirect.

We send our warning emails when your pageviews quota balance drops below 50%, 25%, 10% and 0%. Once your pageviews quota balance hits 0%, you can do one of the following

• wait till the next date of your billing cycle to have it replenished
• re-subscribe to the same plan to start a new billing cycle
• re-subscribe to a bigger plan if the current plan quota will be insufficient

Upgrading

You can upgrade anytime by logging into our dashboard and selecting the plan that suits you. Upon selection, fresh billing cycle will be started. Note that any previously held quota balance will be removed and we don't provide pro-rata refunds. It is best to upgrade when your plan cycle is near it's end.

Downgrading

You can downgrade anytime by logging into our dashboard and selecting the plan that suits you. Upon selection, fresh billing cycle will be started. Note that any previously held quota balance will be removed and we don't provide pro-rata refunds. It is best to upgrade when your plan cycle is near it's end.

Alerts

We send our warning emails when your pageviews quota balance drops below 50%, 25%, 10% and 0%.

Integration

Tracking code concept

Our Geo Redirect runs in the browser (client-side) directly in the website's html by using a JavaScript tracking code. The JavaScript tracking code makes a call to our server with the visitor's details. We then utilize the visitor's IP to determine location and execute a JavaScript redirect if required.

Re-installing tracking code

• You don't need to update the code every time a setting change has been made except when switching between automatic and popup based redirection.
• The tracking code for automatic redirection and popup redirection is different. If you change this setting, please update the tracking code in your website.
• We update the tracking code frequently (every 2-3 months). Please ensure you are always using the latest version of our tracking code. The pervious versions will still work, however for best performance & browser compatibility we advise updating to the latest available version.

Caching tools & plugins

Since our Geo Redirect works in the client browser using JavaScript, it is not affected by any caching plugins or DNS caching tools maybe using. This is because your caching tools will deliver our JavaScript tracking code as is which executes after the page is delivered by the caching tool.

Static Sites

Step by step guide to integrating our geo redirects into a satic site:

Single page apps (SPAs)

Step by step guide to integrating our geo redirects into a Single page application:

Ajax loaded sites

Ajax loaded sites are sites that do not refresh the page when navigating from one page to another.

Step by step guide to integrating our geo redirects into an Ajax based website:

Shopify

Step by step guide to integrating our geo redirects into your Shopify store:

Wordpress

Our Geo Redirects can be integrated into your Wordpress site either by using our Wordpress app or by direct integration into your Wordpress theme.

WIX

Step by step guide to integrating our geo redirects into your WIX website:

Squarespace

Step by step guide to integrating our geo redirects into your Squarespace website:

Webflow

Step by step guide to integrating our geo redirects into your Webflow website:

BigCommerce

Step by step guide to integrating our geo redirects into your BigCommerce store:

Hubspot

Step by step guide to integrating our geo redirects into your Hubspot website:

Cloudflare

We however do not recommend using our Cloudflare app

We provide a Geo Redirect Cloudflare app to help with integrate our tracking code directly into your site if it is running on Cloudflare. The app only injects our tracking code into the site. All settings are still configured in our dashboard and not directly in Cloudflare.

We however do not recommend using it at this stage until further updates. Please integrate our tracking code directly into your website html or CMS.

Google tag manager

We however do not recommend using Google Tag Manager

We do not recommend using Google Tag Manager due to the high number of Adblockers and privacy browsers blocking out Google domains. Instead, integrate our tracking code directly into your website html or CMS.

Other platforms

For all other platforms you will need to integrate our tracking code based on the type of site:

• Standard websites (refreshes page when navigating)
• Single page applications (do not refresh page when navigating)
• Ajax loaded sites (do not refresh page when navigating)

Local & staging environments

The geo redirect setup and tracking code will only work in the Website it is configured to run on. In order to use the setup and tracking code across multiple domains you can use http://* as the website URL. This will allow the tracking code to execute on all domains including your local environment (localhost) or staging domains.

Testing

Location simulation tool

To see how your website redirects from the different locations you have configured, you can use our in-built location injection tool to simulate a location for your device.

Using a VPN

To see how your website behaves from different locations you can use a VPN tool such as Express VPN to access your website from a different country. Note that not all countries are available via VPN services.

Verifying your location

You can verify your device location by visiting My IP Geolocation

Troubleshooting

Redirect is not working

Common reasons why the Geo Redirect is not working correctly are:

• You have not installed the tracking code in your site
• You have not cleared your browser cache or any caching tools resulting in your browser seeing an old version of your site
• Your location detected by our system is incorrect. Visit My IP geolocation to check your location.
• Your testing using a VPN which is resolving to an incorrect location. Visit My IP geolocation to check it's location.
• You are using an old version of our tracking code. Please ensure the tracking code is the one provided in the Geo Redirect setup.

To see more reasons visit our Geo Redirect not working guide

Redirect is slow or delayed

Our servers normally respond and redirect between 80 to 300 milliseconds, hence your redirect should occur fairly instantaneously. If it is taking longer than this to redirect, then there is an issue with the tracking code placement in your website.

For the fastest redirect, our tracking code should be the first to process in your website and should not be blocked by any other external scripts or files present in your website. Place our tracking code immediately after the <head> tag so it is the first line to execute in your site.

Page is showing before redirect

If your page shows momentarily before the redirect, it means there is another script in your website blocking our tracking code and preventing it from executing before your page attempts to load.

Ensure our tracking code is placed immediately after the <head> tag so it is the first line to execute in your site. Also ensure you have utilizing the latest tracking code available in the Geo Redirect setup.

Google ads destination mismatch

One of Google Ads policies is to ensure the destination URL does not redirect a visitor to another URL. This is part of their drive to ensure visitors have the best experience.

If a visitor clicks on a Google Ad and lands on a website which then redirects to another website or page, it can result in your ad being disapproved due to a 'destination mismatch'.
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How to fix a 'destination mismatch' error?
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Geo target your Google Ads
‍Geo target your Google Ads the same way you are Geo Redirecting visitors. Ensure you run separate Google Ads for each 'redirect URL'. For example if you are redirecting UK traffic to another URL, then run a separate ad for UK and ensure the ad is geo targeted to UK (Google Ads can be geo targeted) and the ad link goes direct to your UK website.

Also make sure that your original ad excludes anyone from UK.Doing this will keep the visitor clicks seamless and they won't experience any redirects.
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Manually ask for approval from Google
‍If you have geo targeted your Google Ads and it still gets disapproved, contact Google Ads support explaining your situation and they should be able to manually approve it.
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Use our permission popups/announcement bars available in the Geo Redirect product.
‍If you are already using our Geo Redirect product, all you need to do is enable the 'Permission Popup' option to show a popup/announcement bar to the visitor rather than an automatic redirect.This will remove any destination mismatch errors as there is no redirection in place.We provide a number of popup and announcement bar templates which can be customized to suit your website. The popup and announcement bars also come with smart buttons that can redirect visitors to the same page of another site.Other features include: (1) remembering the visitor's choice for future auto redirection and (2) automatic countdown timer with redirect
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Disable the redirect for ads using our 'Redirect Disable' feature
An advanced setting is provided that can disable the redirect if a particular query string is found in the Google Ad URL.For example, if your Google Ad link URL is http://yourwebsite.com?utm_source=google_ads, you can disable the redirect by adding the parameter 'google_ads' into our 'Redirect Disable' feature.

Read more about our Redirect Disable feature

‍Using this feature, you can disable redirection on any clicks via your ads as we will look for the 'google_ads' query in the URL and prevent the redirect from executing.

Search engine ranking

If your search engine rankings have been affected with the use of a Geo Redirect, try the following:

• Ensure you have used HREFLANG tags on all pages and sites
• Ensure you are utilizing two way redirection (each site redirects to the other accordingly)
• Use a popup redirect instead of an auto redirect

Browser caching

Browser caching does not affect our redirects, however it can result in loading an old version of your site without our tracking code. This normally is an issue when you first install our Geo Redirect.

• Clear your browser cache
• Flush any caching tools or DNS caching services

Incorrect pages being redirected

If a page that is not meant to be redirected is getting redirected, try the following:

• Ensure the page is excluded using the page exclusion settings
• Ensure you are using the latest available tracking code provided

Redirect looping

A redirect loop can be caused when the page being redirected to is also contains the same tracking code and the page URL is part of the domain being redirected. Try the following to over come this:

• Ensure the redirected page is excluded using the page exclusion settings
• Tick the 'Redirect on first visit' option under Advanced Settings
• Ensure you are using the latest available tracking code provided

Specific visitor not redirected

If a specific visitor who is meant to be redirected is not getting redirected, check the following:

• Ensure the visitor's location is detected correctly by out system by asking them to visit My IP Geolocation
• Check your location rules are correct, ensure the 'equal to' and 'not equal to' is utilized correctly
• Visitor is loading an old version of your site without the tracking code. Ask the visitor to clear their browser cache.
• Ensure you are using the latest available tracking code

Specific visitor redirected

If a specific visitor who is not meant to be redirected is getting redirected, check the following:

• Ensure the visitor's location is detected correctly by out system by asking them to visit My IP Geolocation
• Check your location rules are correct, ensure the 'equal to' and 'not equal to' is utilized correctly