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TLD for Country Specific Searches – What Domain Extension (ccTLD) Should You Choose?
I often see questions related to getting your website into country specific SERPs. There have been some urban myths regarding where your IP address resolves to, where you server is located and the TLD used.
Well from the google sitemaps blog:
If you want your site to show up for country-restricted searches, make sure it uses a country-specific domain (such as www.example.com.br). If you use a domain that isn’t country specific (such as .com), make sure that the IP address of the site is located in that country.
So if you have an Irish website and you want to get ranked in the Irish specific SERPs you have to either have a .ie domain or your site should be hosted in Ireland.
If you are looking for either of these then here’s a good Irish hosting company and what I reckon to be the cheapest .ie domain reseller.
We also offer discounted rates to web developers as well as the widest range of ccTLDs on the Irish market
Excuse the blatant plug!
Comment by Michele — July 24, 2006 @ 1:21 pm
Holy god
The first ever comment – I almost feel violated
Nah, actually just feel good that someone left a comment.
Hopefully the first of many.
Comment by Richard — July 24, 2006 @ 1:30 pm
It seems that MSN local (msn.ie) has changed their algorithm slightly and as such a lot of weight has been put on sites with a ccTLD over domains hosted on a local IP
Comment by Jason Roe — July 30, 2006 @ 8:35 am
Hi Jason
Interesting to know. If this is the case it may be that they are trying to gain some market by improving their geo-targeted SERPs. To my knowledge MSN executes c. 7% of search in UK so the figure is likely to be similar (if not lower?) here.
I have to be honest and say that I never use or target MSN.
A couple of years ago I got excited when sites would quickly jump up the MSN and Yahoo SERPs but I quickly learnt that what matters in Irish search is Google.
The one possible exception to this is when you are primarily targeting your site at the corporate and office market – apparently MSN can be a lucrative referrer for this segment (I presume due to the amount of office folk who start searches in the Explorer address bar and hence on to MSN Search).
Giving greater weight to ccTLD’s is an interesting idea but I think in the long run Google’s appraoch is more balanced due to the high prevalence of .com domains.
Interesting development all the same. Thanks for posting it.
Comment by Richard — July 30, 2006 @ 9:13 am