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Question About Country Extention

by ohta
3 replies
  • SEO
    • |
I know this kind of question has been asked many times before and I have read nearly every thread regarding domain extensions, yet nobody really defines what a country specific search is.

For instance. I just recently purchased a .be domain extension just because it fit really well with my domain. I purchased this under an I.P. address that is located in the U.S. and I intend to use nothing but English on my webpage.

My question is whether or not I will even appear in the search engine rankings when a normal person goes to Google in the U.S. and searches my key words. Does Google always offer regions specific results every time you visit their home page in what ever country your in, or do you have to specifically request a U.S. only search. I guess what I am asking is if Google's results are always global by default.
#country #extention #question
  • Profile picture of the author B.Smit
    If, for example, someone is in South Africa and searches for "cake recipes" or "cheap hotels" it makes sense that Google will offer local sites, i.e. sites ending in the CO.ZA extension. Simple reason would be that the Google system assumes a South African site will have more relevant information for someone searching for info in South Africa.

    Are the search results global or local by default? In my experience, unless you specifically set your Google settings to global, default would be local, with an option to "go to Google.com".

    In your case, if someone in Belgium (if I'm not mistaken with the .BE extension) searches for info, your site might come up - if the search was in English.

    To sum up: I *think* for SEO and organic traffic purposes it's not a smart move to go for a local, or country-specific, extension. Branding is another matter. If your URL looks good in a brandable way with the unusual extension, it might still be worth it.
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    • Profile picture of the author Josh 135
      A person can still find your site from any country. By default google is global. However you can change it according to locality.
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  • Profile picture of the author DireStraits
    Originally Posted by ohta View Post

    Does Google always offer regions specific results every time you visit their home page in what ever country your in, or do you have to specifically request a U.S. only search. I guess what I am asking is if Google's results are always global by default.
    As a rule, Google does give more weight/priority, for some search-terms, to sites they've deemed to be "locally relevant" (i.e. targeted to / residing in the same country from which a search originates), but the results will not be limited to sites from that country unless the user specifically requests so.

    Even so, Google considers more than just the domain/ccTLD to determine geographic relevance. It also looks at backlink sources and considers where the site itself is hosted. For example, I have a .me (Montenegro) domain that is hosted in the UK, and I still rank highly in Google's UK SERPs for UK-specific searches, in addition to non-country-specific searches across Google US, Google CA, Google AU and so on.

    Just do not set "country targeting" in Google Webmaster Tools unless you want to narrow down the geographic relevance of your site to one specific country, to the exclusion of others - let Google determine that on its own.
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