The major search engines maintain separate sites for individual countries
or geographic regions. These localized search engines allow users to restrict their search
results to websites that reside within their own country. But most webmasters are not aware
that even normal world-wide searches are biased by geographic location - a technique often
referred to in marketing circles as "geo-location". The underlying premise
is that the closer a website is to the user, the more relevant it is to that user. Naturally,
website owners need to insure that the search engines are aware of their site's true geographic
location. But how do you accomplish this?
The answer is really very simple. The major search engines - Google, Yahoo!,
and MSN - use two common criteria for determining where a site is located (ie. it's geo-location). The first is to
check the Top Level Domain (TLD) name. If your site has a Country Code Top Level Domain Name - that is, a
domain name that ends in a country code like ".ca" for Canada, ".uk" for the
United Kingdom, or ".fr" for France - then your site will be included in the country-specific
search results. The second method used by the search engines to determine the geographic location
of a website is the IP address of the site. If your site is hosted on a server that is physically located
in the target country, then that site will be included in the country-specific searches even if you
have a generic TLD domain name like ".com", ".net" or ".info".
What does all of this mean to the small website owner? It means that if you
buy a Country Code TLD domain name, you can have your site hosted anywhere in the world and still
be automatically considered to have a geo-location in your target country. Until recently, web
hosting was very expensive in many countries outside the US. Its still easier to find cheap hosting
in the US than elsewhere. This leads many small companies to buy hosting services in the US. The
requirements for getting a country-code TLD domain name, if any, are usually limited to a residency
or relevance requirement that is easily met. The WikiPedia has excellent links to all of this
information for each Country Code Top Level Domain that include the governing registrar, the
second-level domains, and the usual requirements. See the above link.
UPDATE 10/31/2007
Google has recently enhanced the Webmaster Tools console to allow you to select the geo-location of
your site. In fact, Google has gone several steps futher than simply setting the country for a
website. You can now set the exact location in conjunction with Google Maps, and have different
geo-location settings for subdomains and subdirectories within a single domain.
To set your website's geo-location in Google, log into the Google Webmaster Tools
console and select the Tools tab. Choose the "Set geographic target" option and you'll
see a form that you can fill in with your website's target location. Once you've done that,
you can also add your website to Google Maps. This is another important reason why you should definitely
participate in the Google Webmaster Tools program.
If you're a non-US website owner and you've already bought hosting
service in the US and (for one reason or another) a generic TLD domain name (ie. ".com"
or ".net" etc.) all is not lost. You can always buy a Country Code Top Level Domain Name,
and move your site to the new domain by installing a server code 301 redirect for all requests
for your old domain name. This will preserve most of your old domain name's search engine rankings
by transferring the link popularity (a.k.a. PageRank). There will be a period of weeks (or, sadly, months)
during which the rankings of your site will be reduced while the search engines absorb the change of
domain name. Once the new domain name has replaced the original domain name in the search engines,
you should also request that your link partners to change their links to your new domain name to insure the long-term benefits of those links.
Its also very useful to examine pages like Google's Country-Specific Search Advice
to see how they advise users to do country-specific searches. Checking the search engines' online
documentation can lead you to a much better understanding of how search engines operate, as well
as how actual users do their searching.
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