Now You Can Tell Google Your Website is Australian
Google has just introduced a new facility in Webmaster Central to record the geographic location of a website.
This could be useful for businesses in Australia because the majority of people here use Google Australia (google.com.au) and Australian websites rank highly compared with overseas ones.
The domain name is primarily used to determine the geographic location so a .com.au site is recognised as Australian. Other factors are also considered such as where the website is hosted. Problems arise when the domain is a .com and especially if it is hosted overseas. The new functionality will allow the correct geographic location to be recorded.
All good except I wonder if we’ll see increased competition in Google Australia and “pages from Australia”?
The new feature doesn’t allow multiple countries to be specified at the top level but it does allow a different country for a sub-domain. So, an overseas site can have www.something.com/australia.
I don’t know whether it will make any difference to the rankings but it will be easier for global companies to nominate a portion of content to be specifically targeted in Australia.
Posted in SEO
October 31st, 2007 at 7:15 pm
“So, an overseas site can have http://www.something.com/australia.”
You mean, australia.something.com?
I think it will definitely make a difference in ranking from localised Google SERP. Search “Whirlpool” in Google AU and Google US shows different #1 result, even with search “the web” instead of “pages from Australia” in Google AU.
Personally I think it will also have small impact on web hosting industry in Australia. For those who can’t get a .com.au used to have to pay expensive Australia hosting to get better ranking on Google AU. Now they don’t have to.
October 31st, 2007 at 7:42 pm
Scott,
On rankings – there’s no doubt that the ranking is different in Google and Google Australia and there are more Australian websites higher up in Google Australia.
What I’m not sure about is how Google will treat the additional information provided to them in webmaster tools.
Lets say a website that is primarily US based creates a subdomain targeted at an Australian audience and registers it as such in webmaster central. Will that sub domain be given just as much weight in Google Australia as a .com.au top domain. We don’t know yet.
It’s a good point on the impact on the web hosting industry in Australia. I quite often see it promoted as a feature that you have to have Australian hosting in order to be recognised as an Australian website. The thing is though that these changes are lost on the average website owner and myths and untruths abound.
I probably used a bad example with the URL structure. I just meant that the geographic location can be specified at the sub domain level as well as the top level domain. So presumably if I want to target ppc services to an American audience and I create http://www.semfire.com.au/ppc/ I can register that as American.
I’m a little bit unsure about all of the implications of this – and to cap it all I can’t even get it to work! I’m waiting for some other experiences regarding that.
October 31st, 2007 at 7:55 pm
There are some more comments on Meg’s blog and she explains why I couldn’t get it to work (I already have a .com.au domain).
October 31st, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Scott,
Sorry - you’re right of course. I’m mixing subdomains and folders. Apparently a different location can be specified per subdomain or subfolder.
November 1st, 2007 at 2:11 am
Christine,
Sorry I just realised that you can add a sub-domain as a site on Google Webmaster Tools.
I guess the issue now is whether there is a degree of “aussie-ness” about a site, depending on its domain, its server IP and its geographical info in Webmaster Tools, or whether it is just an on-off thing.
November 21st, 2007 at 12:56 am
I have set up a website for someone - Melbourne Flamenco - Its just a simple blogspot with a dot com domain over the top.
I was hoping that the use of Melbourne in the URL and Melbourne, Australia in the site content would give it status as an Australian site, however:
It ranks for a search in Google.com but and it ranks for the same search in google.com.au but if I select “pages from Australia” it does not come up!
Discussing it with some associates we theorized that Adsense registration, google earth and google maps might help to convince them!
Thanks for the information.
I have accessed Google Webmaster Tools and updated the geographical location.
Be interesting to see how long this takes to show up!
February 11th, 2008 at 2:19 am
Building ‘Australian’ links to the site you are trying to rank in ‘pages from Australia’ should do the trick as well. Same goes for ranking in ‘local’ geo serps.
February 26th, 2008 at 6:13 am
Being country-targeted makes a big difference in SERPs - in that country.
Google is generally able to work out where a site is from by themselves, but this tool helps them to “get it right”.
(I posted a “how to” article on my blog about this recently…)
Ben’s point (above) is also correct.
It’s easy to see the correlation between Australian sites and rankings in Australian-specific SERPs just by doing some searches.