How to NOT appear in Google results in other countries?

[GregB123]

I have ecommerce sites the only serve US and Canada. Is there a way to prevent a site from appearing in the Google results in foreign countries?

The reason I ask is that we also have a lot of informational pages that folks in other countries are visiting, then leaving right after reading. This is making our overall Bounce Rate very high (64%). When we segment the GA data to look at just our US visitors, then the Bounce Rate drops a lot. (to 48%)

Thanks!

[James77]

Do they cause you any other issue than effecting your bounce rate?

If not, then I would not try to stop them visiting your website, but just segment the bounce rates as you have done above.

The reason I say this is three fold:
1/. Trying to prevent SE's not displaying you to certain countries etc, could be fraught with problems and you could well end up damaging the SERP's in your key countries.

2/. 'Country by IP' is not an exact science - and you may exclude some people who are located in your target countries.

3/. If you ever expand into the countries you want to currently block, would it not be nice to already have traffic from that market? What about customers who are from your target countries but searching while they are on holiday abroad?

Hope that helps

[GregB123]

Hi James,

Our items are large, and shipping to other countries is just way too expensive. So no plans to ever go international.

My understanding is that a low bounce rate (and other stats that relate to a good visitor experience) often result in higher Google rankings. So we really do want to know if there is some way to shut off the flow of foreign visitors...

[Cyrus-Shepard]

I tend to agree with James in terms of bounce rate. Google tries to segment the most relevant result by country, so a low bouncerate outside your target market hopefully wouldn't hurt you much.

That said, you can specify a target country in Google Webmaster Tools. Instructions are here: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/62399?hl=en

Using this setting doesn't ensure your website wont appear in foreign results, but it does give a "hint" to Google that the content isn't targeted for that region.

Hope this helps!

Cyrus