Testing the International Googlebot, Simplified
Following an article on Google crawling from non-U.S. IP addresses, this columnist tests the Locale-Adaptive Testing Tool across 13 different languages and 18 different countries.
Following an article on Google crawling from non-U.S. IP addresses, this columnist tests the Locale-Adaptive Testing Tool across 13 different languages and 18 different countries.
Last month we discussed how, in an attempt to keep up with the rising trend of sites dynamically changing content depending on the location or language preference of their customers, Google has started crawling from non-U.S. IP addresses. Google now requests URLs with Accept-Language headers to discover content that is locale-adaptive.
Because it’s important for SEOs to stay on top of the latest changes Google is making – and due to the overwhelming response received – the previously-featured testing tool has been improved to make it even easier to discover how sites are configured for the international locale-aware crawling of Googlebot. It’s now not only possible to check if your content changes based on the Accept-Language headers, but also from several non-US IP locations.
Begin by simply specifying the URL you would like to test. Here, we choose Google Cloud.
Next, specify the languages you’d like to test against. This will send the proper Accept-Language HTTP request header accordingly. In the example, below we’d like to check if Google Cloud is dynamically changing content for English versus Japanese speakers, and if Googlebot sees the change, as well.
Finally, before clicking Run, choose Google from the drop-down menu and the country of your choice. Here, we’re checking to see how Google Cloud is dynamically changing content for users in Japan that speak English versus Japanese.
Now, we can evaluate the results. In the upper right-hand corner, you can see that the results can be exported to Excel. The column headers seen below are defined as:
The Internet has connected the world in fascinating ways. As this continues on an exponential scale, SEOs who become experts in the nuance of international SEO will certainly reap the benefits.
Remember that if you’re checking whether the URL is changing content based on the IP, choose “none” as the language. Choosing languages can send mixed signals. The page can be locale-adaptive, but you won’t know if it’s based on the language or the IP. However, after testing signals independently, running the test with languages and proxies will enable you to see which signal trumps the other.
In this example, cloud.google.com is only using the Accept-Language, not the IP. Facebook is an excellent example of a site that prioritizes Accept-Language first and then falls back to IP if there’s no language preference specified by the customer.