news Google Searches Now Focus on Your Actual Location, Not the ccTLD in Your Search

[GoKaizen]

Last week Google made another update to the way their search engine works with searches no longer indicated by the domain but rather search results will be served the country service that corresponds to your location. Typing the preferred ccTLD into a search will no longer bring you to the various country services. It’s a change that could make ccTLD domain names less relevant for marketers and businesses.

Source - http://www.domainpulse.com/2017/10/29/google-searches-focus-location-not-cctld/

 

[boker]

Source - http://www.domainpulse.com/2017/10/29/google-searches-focus-location-not-cctld/

I've tested it, it's working something like before, some based on cctlds and some based on location, so not really a big update. This was the same before, the google results were partly based on location partly on the ccltd searched.

 

[IMEZI]

I've tested it, it's working something like before, some based on cctlds and some based on location, so not really a big update. This was the same before, the google results were partly based on location partly on the ccltd searched.

google update usually applied in several step, first they rollout in somepart of USA, any revised or correction will be made before they were fully applied on USA, later then it will be rolled out internationally

 

[boker]

google update usually applied in several step, first they rollout in somepart of USA, any revised or correction will be made before they were fully applied on USA, later then it will be rolled out internationally

By checking google update press release, seems that it was tested out already in september, so it should work already everywhere. On certain keywords, it shows even some cctlds from Africa, the search being made in Eu and the cctld used is from another EU country. So, from 10 results on the first page, 1 is from south africa, 7 local and 2 cctld based.

 

[Furquan]

I really don't think Google give domain name a think, whether your site is .com, .co, .nz, .online, etc. He only like authority, Freshness, Mobile Friendly, User Friendly.

BUT

In some cases Google prefer to give country level domain name first pretence then .com

 

[boker]

I really don't think Google give domain name a think, whether your site is .com, .co, .nz, .online, etc. He only like authority, Freshness, Mobile Friendly, User Friendly.

BUT

In some cases Google prefer to give country level domain name first pretence then .com

I think that always local cctld was important, for example serching 'club' (universal used) in an EU local cctld, will show 9 out 10 local cctlds and 1 com(wikipedia)

 

[GoKaizen]

https://www.blog.google/products/search/making-search-results-more-local-and-relevant/

 

[enlytend]

Searches are prioritizing locality over depending on the GOOGLE cctld you're using So if you're in Texas and go to google.de and search trying to find German results, you'll get US results instead.
But if you're searching in Germany, you will still see .de sites and others that have been targeted to a German audience via google search console.
You can override by tagging the gl= URL parameter onto your search string.

 

[boker]

Searches are prioritizing locality over depending on the GOOGLE cctld you're using So if you're in Texas and go to google.de and search trying to find German results, you'll get US results instead.
But if you're searching in Germany, you will still see .de sites and others that have been targeted to a German audience via google search console.
You can override by tagging the gl= URL parameter onto your search string.

This will affect .com and all gtld's even more. I've tested it and is enforcing local tlds and local language over everything. Even for general english words like 'shop', 'club' or 'media' it will be hard to have a .com or a gtlds in the first pages of google, if you are not US based. For example, one result from tripadvisor.com was the only .com and any other gtlds in the first 50 results in my country for 'club' keyword. For 'shop', there were 4 .com and 1 .shop results out of 50 and most of them were using local language. So, even Amazon and Ebay have disappeared from the first 50 results.

 

[enlytend]

And when you use the gl parameter?
Shop, club and media are not good keywords to test with - too vague and ambiguous. Try a plumber or a particular product or type of product.
Not showing a lot of Amazon or eBay results may be unrelated .. and not a bad thing.

 

[boker]

And when you use the gl parameter?
Shop, club and media are not good keywords to test with - too vague and ambiguous. Try a plumber or a particular product or type of product.
Not showing a lot of Amazon or eBay results may be unrelated .. and not a bad thing.

Google parameter, for an online shop? Almost anytime, because most of the traffic is coming from google searches, if you are excluding the paid advertising. Backlinks, social media, they bring just a part of the traffic. I have used club and media, because they are the same in most other local languages and people will look for the same keywords. If you want some examples as 'outdoor gear', most of the peoples not speaking english will use the equivalent in the local language and in this case .com shops in english will not have any chance to rank higher then a cctld shop in local language. Until now, amazon and ebay were ranking high in searches, even if they were not using a cctl and were in english, but not anymore, so if they can't rank high, for the smaller shops will be even harder, if they don't go local. I have a shop selling in around 10 EU countries, in english, it was easier to manage, but now I will need to change the strategy and use multiple shops using multiple languages, so much harder to manage.

 

[enlytend]

The issue is that a search is defaulting to results for your actual location regardless of which Google domain you perform the search on. Use the gl parameter to get the "old" behavior to see at SERPs from a different country as you would have before they made this change. for example: gl=us, gl=de, gl=fr ... etc.

Any other change you're seeing is an unrelated update. They've been doing a lot of them this year.

BTW, anyone using rank trackers - this apparently has mucked up results in quite a few of them.