In WMT under Geographic target something are not clear or left out to answer my question. To make this as short as possible. If live in the US and buy a ccTLD like a dot cc (.cc). Can I use the geographic target feature to tell Google search to index and add my .cc to the US search under the .com of google? I did see that the .cc version of google is redirected to the .com. I may not even have to do anything? But I'm not sure how to make this work. Please help me as soon as you can...if you can
GWT says, of geographic targetting: The .cc extension is Cocos Islands which is an Australian territory, right? So this seems to be a country-specific domain and you probably couldn't geo-target this in GWT to the US. Unless, of course, anybody else has any ideas of how to get around this...
Not sure about .cc but I know that there are some ccTLDs like .me that can be Geo targeted to any region (maybe .tv as well). You need someone who has an example.cc in WMT's to confirm it... (example.co.cc may be different again as co.cc is an actual site that offers free sub domains) Cheers James
I also read the this and it is still not very clear how I would get this done. The reason I think it can be dona is if you were to look at ma.tt or search for matt in google, this domain is #1 and is a Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. On another note after reading a few articles. It looks like if there is no geo target is set and your getting traffic from the US the domain would then return in the US .com of Google. I'm just not certain and have no proof however it seems that way with ma.tt knowing this domain gets tons of traffic from the US. ma.tt is owned by the owner of wordpress Will have to look more to make sure
Blasingame, if you look at http://whois.domaintools.com/ma.tt you'll see under the server stats tab that his IP is US-based... just wondering if that is counted for by Google? I had this concern last year when choosing hosting for a large commercial site. Being a .com since 1999 and having a UK audience I chose UK-based over US-based servers to ensure the site encountered no potential problems and still geo-targeted the UK in GWT to make sure. Your two options are then a) leave the geo-targeting option blank or b) geo-target the US anyway (if GWT lets you have that option) and I'd be inclined to go for option b, with a US IP
Excellent reply green added. I would saying you cannot select geographic location for any domain beyond generic one such as com net biz org info. I would recommend you select a new generic domain and start promote them for global over using the country specific domain such as current one.
Thank you guy! It has been determined that geo targeting any domain of any TLD in not necessary. Building Links, the location of links and traffic will determine where you might see search results on a particular domain. Proving if you have a ccTLD and it is returned in a US search you have done your homework.
Does anyone here think that there is still weight in hosting a site in the UK in addition to the geo target settings? Must one make this standard practice to host in the country of target?
Yes, if you want to target a UK audience, then you should get a co.uk, net.uk, etc, then get a host in the uk, then make sure you dns name/address is in the uk.
As per Google absolutely not. The location of a server and or IP address has no relevance on where your domain gets indexed.
I think their more concerned about ranking, or which region Google thinks the site targets. In which case, hosting does play a role (although a pretty small one) [video=youtube;hXt23AXlJJU]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXt23AXlJJU[/video] [video=youtube;w41dsE87CfY]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w41dsE87CfY[/video] Some other things to keep in mind... Having a physical mailing address in your contact page gives Google an idea of where you are located. (EG: PO box 1234, City, Country, ZIP code). Also the sites primary language (If the text on the site is all Japanese, then regardless of TLD or hosting, Google will have a pretty good idea who your targeting) Cheers James