Need advice for SE friendly Geo Redirect technique

[rgardenti]

Hello,
I need advices to optmize a customer's site for Google, that is actually using a Java geo redirect script to target specific countries. Example: www.website.com is the main page, and indexita.htm is the location where the java script redirects italian customers... so on for other countries...
I have some doubts regarding this situation, first because the index page is absolutely empty (it only serve to redirect customers to a specific regional page..), and also because making use of a Java Script to redirect visitors is always a tecnique that scare me...
What is your opinion about this?
Any suggestion to make this situation SE friendly is greatly appreciated.
Thank you

[activeco]

Apache?
Check MaxMind - GeoIP Apache API (http://www.maxmind.com/app/mod_geoip)

Use it in httpd.conf (apache.conf) or .htaccess:

RewriteCond %{ENV:geoIP_COUNTRY_CODE} ^IT$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^mydomain.com$ MyDomain (http://mydomain.it) [R=301]

[Jean-Luc]

I would also be scared with such a setup. ;)

I would put English content in the home page and the JavaScript redirects and flags or text links to go to the localized home pages. English users would not be redirected and Google would see this content first. International users would be redirected as they are now and they would see their localized content and Google would be able to follow the text links (or flags) to these localized pages. This is not a perfect solution, but probably much better than what you have now.

Jean-Luc