Google not using redirect

[ahyde]

We have a GEO-IP redirect in place for our domain, so that users are pointed to the subfolder relevant for their region, e.g: Visit example.com from the UK and you will be redirected to example.com/uk

This works fine when you manually type the domain into your browser, however if you search for the site and come to example.com, you end up at example.com

I didn't think this was too much of an issue but our subfolders /uk and /au are not getting ranked at all in Google, even for branded keywords. I'm wondering if the fact that Google isn't picking up the redirect means that the pages aren't being indexed properly?

Conversely our US region (example.com/us) is being ranked well.

Has anyone encountered a similar issue?

[ahyde]

I've been doing a bit more digging and I'm wondering if its the GEO IP tool we're using (MaxMind) and the way it is configured which is effecting our ranking...

[trung.ngo]

Hey there,

Have you checked to see if the /au and /uk pages are indexed in Google at all? I'd use the "site:" search operator to check that as a first step. I'd also recommend implementing hreflang if you haven't already: https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/189077?hl=en

-Trung

[ahyde]

Yep they're indexed.

We're going to implement webmaster tools on each subfolder and then set the location to see if that makes any difference.

I thought hreflang was just if you had full translations but I'll take a look at adding that as well.

Thanks.

[gfiorelli1]

Do you have implemented the hreflang mark-up?

Remember, Googlebot comes from an US IP, hence it will probably will see always the .com general version of the site. If you implement the hreflang, you are telling it what URLs to show depending on the country the visitors performs a search from.