A conversation cropped up in a forum recently about the issues surrounding domains and server locations when it comes to search. There is a lot of confusion out there about how Google et al decide which ‘local’ search your site should feature in.
Here’s a quick explanation:
The first thing Google considers when deciding whether to put you into Google.com or Google.co.uk or Google.fr etc is the domain name. If your domain name is .co.uk, Google will automatically put you in the Google.co.uk results.
However, for .com, .net, and .org domain names, which are not country specific, Google has no guide as to which geographic region the site is targeting, and so falls back on two other methods of assigning a country to a website.
Firstly, it allows site owners to specify which country they’re targeting via Google Webmaster Tools. (note this ONLY works for com, net and org type domains).
If the site owner doesn’t do this, then Google will fall back on the location of the web host to ‘guess’ where the site is targeting. And it is a ‘guess’ as a huge majority of websites are hosted abroad where hosting tends to be cheaper than in the UK.
So, if you want to be found in Google.fr, what are your options?
Either buy a .fr domain name and point it at your site, or buy a .com domain name and use Google webmaster tools to tell Google that the site targets a french audience using Webmaster tools.
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Domains, hosting and SEO
A conversation cropped up in a forum recently about the issues surrounding domains and server locations when it comes to search. There is a lot of confusion out there about how Google et al decide which ‘local’ search your site should feature in.
Here’s a quick explanation:
The first thing Google considers when deciding whether to put you into Google.com or Google.co.uk or Google.fr etc is the domain name. If your domain name is .co.uk, Google will automatically put you in the Google.co.uk results.
However, for .com, .net, and .org domain names, which are not country specific, Google has no guide as to which geographic region the site is targeting, and so falls back on two other methods of assigning a country to a website.
Firstly, it allows site owners to specify which country they’re targeting via Google Webmaster Tools. (note this ONLY works for com, net and org type domains).
If the site owner doesn’t do this, then Google will fall back on the location of the web host to ‘guess’ where the site is targeting. And it is a ‘guess’ as a huge majority of websites are hosted abroad where hosting tends to be cheaper than in the UK.
So, if you want to be found in Google.fr, what are your options?
Either buy a .fr domain name and point it at your site, or buy a .com domain name and use Google webmaster tools to tell Google that the site targets a french audience using Webmaster tools.
Go on... click it... you know you want to!
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