Are there SEO implications to blocking foreign IP addresses?

[ZeeCreative]

We are dealing with a foreign company that has completely ripped off our entire site template, design and branding. This is such an inconvenience and we've had similar things happen enough in the past that we're considering blocking large ranges of IP addresses from accessing our site, via htaccess.

Is this something that will potentially cause problems with search engine bots crawling or indexing our site? We are in the US and our site is hosted in the US, but I'm not sure if the major search engines could potentially be using foreign based bots.

Looking for any insight on this or if there are any other potential SEO problems to consider.

Thanks

[SEOKeith]

By blocking large ranges of IP address you could end up restricting access to legitimate users, bots etc.

For a start how do you even know what site is harvesting your data is in the said country, sure they might be hosting there but the boxes that are ripping your content might be in the US they could then have some web heads in some other random countries serving up the content.

People copying / stealing / cloning your content is pretty common it happens to a lot of my sites - it's just the way it is your not going to be able to stop it you might as well just focus on making your site more authoritative.

[ZeeCreative]

Thanks for the reply SEOKeith, but focusing "on making our site more authoritative" does not solve the problem.

The problem we have is not an SEO problem, it's a design, copyright, trademark and ethical problem. When you spend months developing and designing a site only to have it ripped off, it's not something we want to just ignore.

The damage has been done in this particular instance. However, we've had enough problems in the past from foreign visitors and our business doesn't come from foreign countries. Because of that, blocking actual humans from accessing our site from countries we've had problems with is a potential solution.

The solution we're considering could potentially impact the way search engines view our site and that's the question. Do you have anything to back up your comment about "blocking large ranges of IP addresses you could end up restricting access to legitimate...bots"?

[SEOKeith]

If the bot is in another country and you have blocked the range it's pretty obvious... What kind of "backup" are you looking for?

If you are asking me if I have a geographical list of bots for each search engine then no, I don't. But this might be of some use to you http://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/webmasters/TbpNyFiJvjs

Good luck with the whole site design / copyright issue, any chance you could PM me a link I would like to see what they have done... (just curious).

[Gyi]

Zee, did you implement this? Outcomes?