GEO IP redirection for international SEO is a much-debated topic, despite Google having a clear stance on the topic (that it breaks the index). But what about Yandex?
Yandex’s webmaster support documentation doesn’t specifically say it’s a negative, however, they do advise that:
If the site uses a redirect based on the user’s IP address, the robot’s IP address may differ from the region’s IP address. Therefore, any of the page versions can be displayed in the search results. As a result, the page content may not match what you’d like the user to see.
Meaning that Yandexbot will likely struggle to crawl, index, rank the correct language version (mirrors, as Yandex, calls it) to the correct users – in a similar fashion to Google’s indexes breaking.
Instead, Yandex recommends using Hreflang.
Outside of SEO considerations, GEO IP redirects can also fall foul of EU regulations – so there is that to consider!
