: Does Googlebot share geo-location information to better crawl geo-aware websites? I'm developing a website that allows users to share their location via JavaScript. Based on that location, either

@Eichhorn148

Googlebot does not use JavaScript or the GeoLocation HTTP header to indicate its geographic location. Googlebot will appear to be a visitor that does not have these features.

Googlebot does come from a real IP address. If you were determining location from that IP address, you would likely redirect Google to a page appropriate for a Mountain View, California user.

Google has a blog post that tells how to treat Googlebot in these cases:


Geolocation: Serving targeted/different content to users based on their location. As a webmaster, you may be able to determine a user's location from preferences you've stored in their cookie, information pertaining to their login, or their IP address. For example, if your site is about baseball, you may use geolocation techniques to highlight the Yankees to your users in New York.

The key is to treat Googlebot as you would a typical user from a similar location, IP range, etc. (i.e. don't treat Googlebot as if it came from its own separate country—that's cloaking).

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