For traffic sent by the search engines, how much personalization/customization is allowed on a page if any?

[Thos003]

If I want to better target my audience so I would like to be able to address the exact query string coming from the search engine. I'd also like to add relevant sections to the site based in the geo area they live in.

• Can I customize a small portion of the page to fit my visitors search query and geo area per the IP address?
• How much can I change a web page to better fit a user and still be within the search engine's guidelines?

[CPU]

You can choose to show different content to different regions based on IP and many large sites use it to some extent. One key point from the Google Webmaster guidelines is not not show Google something complete different again from all the other regions. If you do it will be seen as cloaking.

Therefore you should decide which regions version of the site you widh Google to see.

In terms of how much of the content you can change I am not aware of any best practices on this matter so it may be worth reading through the relevant sections on the Google Webmaster guideline pages.