netfleet

Two distinct possibilities:

1) we all know Google gives preference to local websites. Eg if I search for 'flowers'on google.com.au, 9 of the top 10 results are Australian sites using com.au (the exception is the often found wikipedia entry). That's not to say the com.au in itself gives SEO benefit but it helps Google decide that the site is Australian and so gives it that extra boost in the SERPS.

So, we need to consider whether Google will give .Asia domains any sort of advantage for all searches made in Asia exactly as they do for com.au in Australia (and .de, .co.uk in their respective countries no doubt). Does anyone know whether this happens for .EU? Searching from Australia, I have never seen a .EU pop up in results... if European searchers do see .EU domains in the SERPS then perhaps this is the case?


2) Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the first time that an extension is a high volume search term in it's own right. If you search for the term 'com' in Google for example, Google emboldens the 'com' in the extension for the results. This suggests that Google does indeed look at the extension when analysing a keyword (rather than just use an extension for sorting a query geographically as in the above example.)

So, does this mean that domains like hotels.asia will, all other factors being equal, have an edge in terms of SEO for a search "hotels in asia" over hotels.com?

If these two theories are proved to be true, this unquestionably adds a significant premium to the value of all .Asia domains.

Any thoughts?

-REECE-

http://www.google.asia

I think we have our short term answer

netfleet

lol - not a good sign!

However I don't just mean searches from google.asia. Searching using google.com in Australia produces the same results.

Google judges where you are by your IP rather than which version of it's SE you use... or so I believe.

james2002

Also

www.google.eu

But it does not necessarily mean .asia do not have prospect.

Google just redirects the domains to their main site.

eg.

www.google.biz
www.google.info
www.google.tv

I think they will redirect google.eu and google.asia soon.

joexbl

netfleet,

ive been watching this pretty closely and i think it really does help. Im not an SEO expert, but my site broadwaymusicals.asia (my hosting co is down at the mo so site is offline! ) gets amazing rankings in related google searches. I think this is because a) it is a well-optimized theme and b) the extension really does help. If you search for 'broadway musicals asia' or 'broadway musicals in asia' for example, the extension is also bolded as a keyword in the results, giving it extra weighting. 80% of all my traffic comes from Google.

I think the best way to improve Google standings wth .asia is to make sure your name sounds right when you add 'asia' to the search phrase e.g. 'domain name asia'. In the example of hotels.asia, i think if you just search for 'hotels' then .com will still come up wherever you are, but if you searched for 'hotels asia' or 'hotels in asia' then it would bring up the hotels.asia site above the .com counterpart.

Either way, ive noticed my .asia sites get better Google rankings than my .coms!

Of course this all applies only to developed sites.

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james2002

Brilliant example.

I also thought .asia will help SEO.

Esp if people put asia in their searches.

My i Cruise .asia
will be good for "asia cruise" searches.

joexbl

Im not saying that you can just do a poor job on SEO and expect to turn up at the top, but it does help with SEO, possibly giving that bit extra of an advantage. I cant think off the top of my head any other extn that gets highlighted as a keyword?

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james2002

info is another extension.

eg.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=boils+info&meta=

You will see my site "boils , info" in the search results.

netfleet

Ah yes i didn't think of .info

That is a great example. No offence to your SEO but while the site has good content, I wouldn't have though that normally it would have enough links (from just 5 sites as far as I can see) to justify a top 10 placement so perhaps the keyword featuring in the extension is the helping hand.

This really is significant news if true - anyone else have any examples?

charming site BTW, James2002

james2002

Thanks

I haven't updated the site for sometime and I may sell the site if any one interested in it as I have no time for it.

Rubber Duck

If you are concerned about getting SEO in Asia, you should perhaps give a moments thought to trying to match the script of the Domain to that of the Search enquiry. People in Asia rely on search much more heavily than we do because until now they have not been able to put meaningful names in a familiar script into their address bar. They do, however, input just about any language or script apart into Search bars in much greater bulk than they input English/Latin queries. If you are to get any SEO advantage, you have to match the input, and that means using the same script. Forget the impact of extension, if you are in a parallel universe in terms of keywords no extension is going to have any benefit over any other extension!

Do you see any Chinese Language sites pop up when you imput an English search Keyword. No, you do not. I can assure you if you put in Chinese Keywords very few sites with English content pop up at all.

joexbl

well, great example. Especially given that there are 1.9M results on that search

Im with netfleet, again no offence, but i wouldn't have expected yours to be that high up - good stuff

Good point,

though the cold facts are i get a lot of traffic from Google - pretty amazing the keywords people type that bring up my site in the top 3 results. But yes you are right that the script is also important. This also does bring us back round to the ol argument about how many people in 'asia' speak english or use english for urls.

Also forgot to mention that i do get hits from people searching in other scripts - i have had Korean, Chinese (simplified), Japanese, Arabic to name a few. I use a translation widget on my site (broadwaymusicals.asia) which caches pages in all different languages - very cool. I probably have had around 20 searches from google (google.jp google.kr google.cn) in other non-english scripts.

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netfleet

Well that's exactly what we are debating and we seem to be finding evidence to the contrary. The extension can make a difference but only if the extension itself is included in the actual search term.

I search for "fishing net" in Google and five of the top ten results are .net domains (including cc-TLDs which incorporate the letters 'net')

I search for "fishing" in Google and only one of the top ten are .net domains.

This strongly suggests that, if you sell a product involving 'nets' of some variety, you do indeed have an edge if you have a .net domain name rather than a .com.

Now, if this theory holds true for .Asia domains (and I can't see any reason why it wouldn't), we should all re-assess our values for domains of this extention if the domain itself contains or matches a high volume search term.

joexbl

netfleet,

good call on the .net example, i really think we're right here. Google results 'highlight' or bold the search result terms, which includes the url. Im sure there is something in their algorithm to add a bit of weight for this, otherwise they would ignore the url weighting.

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netfleet

Another example:

"music info" - 3 of top 10 are .info domains
"music information" - 0 of top 10 are .info domains

Rubber Duck

Yes, but irrespective of whether you believe that Asians will use IDN or not, what we do know is that outside the sub-content that just about 99% of content is not in Latin script, and that vast majority of search terms are not in Latin script either. In India polls suggest that 80% of current Internet Users would prefer to access the Internet in their own language and this is likely to be true of 99% of new users.

What you say may be true, but it is basically only going to true for Non-Asian that know they should be using an Asian version of Google. In otherwise interesting but ultimately pointless.

It is a fundamental truth that your search term must be in the same language as your content for your search to be effective. It also true that only domains in local script are going to give an SEO advantage for content in local script.

netfleet

Sorry rubber duck but I think you misunderstand.

If this is true, this bias would effect anyone, anywhere in the world who uses a search term with the word "asia" in it.

People in New York searching for "asia recipes" would be more likely to see recipes.asia in the SERPs that recipes.com (all other factors being equal which, of course at the moment they are not!)

The whole IDN issue is something different (which I'd love to pick your brain about as I am very interested) and probably best discussed in another thread.

Rubber Duck

Yes, what you are saying now is absolutely true. You effectively pick up the extra keyword.

The only thing is most literate English people would probably search for Asian Recipes, don't you think? And that wouldn't work.

netfleet

Well it may or may not work. Google does use semantic recognition (eg search for "domainers" in Google. Top entry is Wikipedia with the term "Domaining" in bold). But perhaps it was a poor example. clearer examples include

"holidays in asia"
"hotels in asia"
"weather in asia"
"map of asia"
etc

Rubber Duck

Hotel in Asia, or Holidays in Asia. Are these really likely searches? The second one is plausible but most people would be searching for a specific location and very definitely in the case of the first.

"Tokyo Hotels" is a much more likely search formula than "Hotels in Asia". But even then most of those staying hotels in Tokyo would be Japanese Businessmen who would search in Japanese characters.

How many people actually want a map of the Asia? Or indeed want to know what the weather is like when you probably have 95% percent of the extreme global range at any given time. Anything from minus 40 to plus 40 with an degree of humidity is possible at any given moment. Just how useful is it?

netfleet

Rubberduck, thanks for trying to find reasons to discredit this theory. Every argument needs to be tested against a counter argument to make it solid.

Firstly you said

Then you conceded that perhaps that wasn't the case

Then you pursued the line that the term "asian" would more likely be used in searches but that looks to be irrelevant anyway due to Google's semantic search algo.

Now you are suggesting that serach terms containing the words 'asia' and 'asian' (see point above) should be considered low search terms? I think you are running low on arguments against.

My software identifies 5,079 unique search terms containing the word "asia" from Australia over the last few weeks. It identifies 7,094 containing the word "asian". This is just a sample from Australian searches.

To give you an idea of volume, something we all care about, "domains" clocked in at 474, "domain names" at 271, "domain name" at 725. I just picked that selection of search terms so you have an idea of scale.

So, it seems that both 'asia' and 'asian' feature very highly in search terms, at least here in Australia.

martina2061

I don't have many .tv names but wouldn't .tv have an SEO benefit as well?

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Diamonds

.jd.

for tuvalu yes.

netfleet

Good point Martina that's an obvious one!

I just did a search for "australia tv" and "history tv" (first things off the top of my head) and each set of results had one .tv name in them.

That's 1 more than I usually see!

Any .tv investors care to comment?

james2002

They also will have SEO benefits.

Like

Watchfootballon.tv

etc....