Does using Google Loader's ClientLocation API to serve different content based on region hurt SEO?

[Ocularis]

Does using Google Loader's ClientLocation API to serve different content based on region hurt SEO?

Is there a better way to do what I'm trying to do?

[matbennett]

Tricky this, as it depends on how it is being used.

Plenty of sites include dynamic content that will differ to different users. This can be for a number of legitimate reasons including serving different geographic content. If you are targeting general (non geographic) terms and every version of that page is serving those phrases well there should be no harm.

However, if the aim is to rank for [keyword placename] type searches and use the geographic targeting to do that then that is unlikely to work.  If that were the aim you would probably be better served by having distinct pages for the pages and using the clienlocation API to direct users towards the most relevant one for them.

[Ocularis]

I am actually not really using this for SEO ranking purposes, although that might not be a bad side-effect.

I am using it to serve different content to different geographic locations. e.g. displaying the correct regional sales managers for the correct locations etc.

Do you think that placing dynamic content based on location on the homepage might give the googlebots a false cloaking? That wouldn't be too good.

[matbennett]

I think people panic about cloaking/dynamic content too much to be honest.

It would be easy to go overboard and start alarm bells ringing, but if you have a dynamic area on a well structured and balanced page I can't see it being an issue.

Caveat: I can't think of a clear comparison to something I have worked on in terms of serving it geographically.  However I've done similar based on countless other criteria and not felt it has harmed anything.