Blocking countries to my site

[belvedere +]

Hi,

I'm trying to reduce the amount of scammers which are contacting advertisers in my site and I've learnt I can block country ip-address ranges by editing the .htaccess file. Because my website is only for Spain, my question is, if I block countries which I'm not interested in (i.e. Africa, USA, Asia etc.) would this have a negative effect on my SEO and web Ranking. Basically I think I'm only interested in traffic from Western Europe.

Can more knowleagable people give me their opinion on this please.

Thanks
Mike

[Lhotch +]

Simply put there is no sure fire way of blocking anyone from your site. Web proxies can disguise the origination of browser so at best you will just reduce traffic from those areas.

Its also best done at the web host level. CHeck with your hosting company in your cpanel and see what they have available.

[belvedere +]

Originally Posted by Lhotch

Simply put there is no sure fire way of blocking anyone from your site. Web proxies can disguise the origination of browser so at best you will just reduce traffic from those areas.

Its also best done at the web host level. CHeck with your hosting company in your cpanel and see what they have available.

Thanks Larry. Our hosting company (hostgator) are the ones who told me to edit the htaccess file. How will it affect SEO and page ranking?

Mike

[Lhotch +]

im not an seo expert but I wouldnt think it would affect seo ratings for countries that you service.

[belvedere +]

Reading through the Forum I've come across the Automatedthinking.com Scam Filter Module which could help with my scamming problem. Is anybody using it and is it any good?

Thanks
Mike