Why am I getting millions of links from my root domain to my subdomains?

[CMcC]

My site's subdomains (us.example.com, de.example.com, etc.) are showing millions of links (in Google Webmaster Tools) from the root domain.  This seems very unnatural to me.  Any idea what would be cause this or is this?

In addition, I just found out that we deliberately stop googlebot crawling GEO-IP redirects, so that when googlebot tries to crawl our UK, DE, FR, etc. sites, it is not redirected to us.example.com.  I'm thinking they may be linked?

Thanks for your help!

[JCurrier]

It's a little hard to tell not being able to look at the site in question, but I'm wondering if the redirects are somehow creating a loop causing it to appear like more pages with more links? Just an idea.

[CMcC]

Hi JCurrier,

Thanks for replying - sounds like a good shout.  I added an attachment showing a sample of the links.

Let me know if this confirms you original idea or leads you to think its something else?

Cheers

zhtRSnB

[katemorris]

What you're doing would cause that many links to the US subdomain. In fact, it'll happen to any domain with that location changer up top. I wouldn't worry about the number of internal links due to this, I'd worry more that you're doing something that isn't great for your user. I'd recommend not doing an IP based automatic redirect. Rather, detect the IP, set a cookie, tell people you think they are in that location with a JS prompt that allows them to change the location and then always let them change the location regardless of IP.

Does that make sense?

[CMcC]

Hey Kate,

Thanks for your reply and for putting my mind to ease on the internal links.

As for the questionable user experience - couldn't agree more!  I've have instructed the tech team to removed the auto-redirect - you've now just reinforced my opinion.

Thanks,

Ciaran

[katemorris]

So glad to help! Good luck with everything!!