John Mueller of Google reminds us that when you use the geographic target setting in Google Search Console it will not stop you from getting traffic to your site from users outside of that target region. All it does is help Google understand your site might be more relevant in specific Google regions but not to prevent your site from showing in other locations.
John Mueller posted this on Twitter, he said "Geotargeting doesn't restrict a site to only be shown in that location."
Geotargeting doesn't restrict a site to only be shown in that location.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) November 12, 2019
He added later that if you want to restrict specific regions from hitting your site, you need to do that on your end.
You'd have to do it on your end. There's no option to do this through search, for web-pages.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) November 12, 2019
Geotargeting doesn't restrict access, it just means we can promote it as local for folks searching for local results in that country. You need to handle this on your end. There's no option for search engines that restricts access from individual countries.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) November 12, 2019
The Geographic Target is an old Search Console featuring coming to the tool in 2007.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
