Comments on: What’s Most Effective for Geo Targeting?

By: Marketing Consultant

Marketing Consultant — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 13:35:17 +0000

Thanks for your insights, guys, does it mean that when I have a .ie domain and want to target Northern Ireland, should I get a .co.uk domain as well?

By: Remi Turcotte

Remi Turcotte — Wed, 06 May 2009 21:31:56 +0000

I do not see the option in GWT ? Why ? (im based in Canada)

By: Dan Bell

Dan Bell — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 23:51:37 +0000

Great article, Ann. You always have great insight. I knew there was a good reason to buy those .us domain names. Good stuff!

By: Stefan

Stefan — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 13:38:29 +0000

It surely will have an impact on normal web-searches of the geo googles, thats what an official google employee said:”
Using the tool to target example.com to the UK may have some effect on non-country-restricted searches, but it probably won’t be the same as having example.co.uk. Most sites will see results somewhere between the two extremes (no effect, and total equivalence with ccTLDs).”

By: Gabriel

Gabriel — Sun, 25 May 2008 19:53:16 +0000

I’ve an 9 years old .com domain targeting different contents to different countries using subdomais.
Now, I’m updatind to a totaly new version of the website at the same domain. What is better, keep the subdomains or use TLDs for each country?

(I`ll 301 redirect all the pages of the old website to the new using TLDs or not)

By: Mercy

Mercy — Wed, 21 May 2008 04:17:27 +0000

Thanks for the replies guys!

By: Richard Hearne

Richard Hearne — Tue, 20 May 2008 13:14:51 +0000

NP – the reason I commented here was that I think Barry also got this out of context over on SERoundtable. The tool does work, but we cant be sure of the impact, if any, on normal web searches from country properties.

By: Ann Smarty

Ann Smarty — Tue, 20 May 2008 13:05:03 +0000

@Richard Hearne : thanks for clarifying the context. I thought linking to the post already gave the readers enough information on the original discussion. And many thanks for mentioning the time frame. I heard it took between 11 weeks to 6 months for the geo targeting to work…

@BottomTurn : duplicate content of same language countries is definitely an issue and we do lack tools to held search engines handle it.

@António : great additions! I do appreciate your sharing the experience.

@Mercy : as far as the discussion evolves, I guess your UK server location and setting UK in Webmaster tools will work… Just give it some time.

By: António

António — Tue, 20 May 2008 11:41:29 +0000

1)From my experience a ccTLD is enough to be in the Search results if the TLD is the same of the country.

2) Google says on its pages:
“Our crawlers identify the country that corresponds to a site by factors such as the physical location at which the site is hosted, the site’s IP address, and its domain restrict.”

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=34450

I’ve seen plenty of clearly international meant web sites appear on my local (pt) searches just because their ip is local (eg blog.com’s subdomains)

3) I’ve used webmaster tools for geo targeting websites with .com and .net TLDs and so far they’ve worked pretty well. In fact, my very own blog is a.com, it’s server is in Canada and I certainly appear on searches for “pages of the country”.

I don’t own any such domain with a funny TLD (.to. .tv,) but I don’t think it should be google’s business to decide whether “postais.de/natal” (Christmas Cards: de= portuguese for of; .de, Germany’s TLD) belongs to Germany or a portuguese speaking results when webmasters have opted themselves to target such and such countries.

By: BottomTurn

BottomTurn — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:53:59 +0000

Geo Targeting is a big issue, especially when you have a client, which has got offices world wide, and has got the same English pages adressing different countries! Apart from not addressing the correct website to the right country, we also have problems with duplicate contents.. we are far from having the right tools to provide the search engines the most appropriate web site, and therefore help them get the best SERPs they should give.