223 replies to this topic

[mcanerin]

Remember also that simply moving your whole website over the the country specific TLD and then doing a 301 to it with your .com is supposed to work, too.

The problem is that it's a real pain if you have the .com already set up and running, and several SE's are still having problems dealing with redirects. But it does work for some people, apparently.

It's also more expensive for most people (depends on the host).

The search engines *want* to know if you are a country specific site - they will do what they can to try to find the info out - all we have to do is give them a nudge in the right direction (hopefully without messing anything else up in the process).



Ian

Edited by mcanerin, 28 May 2004 - 04:39 AM.

[Tonemeister]

once again :yay: :v:

[Denyse]

Could someone put the link to the Only In Canada, Eh? article please - I can't find it!!!!

[mcanerin]

That's an easy one to help out with

http://www.mcanerin....calsearch01.htm

Remember that the IP issue is mostly a Google thing right now.



Ian

[Denyse]

Excellent research Ian - I already knew there was a problem but you found the answer as well as a livable solution.

Thank you!

[Hans]

We currently have a .com and a .co.uk domain and the .co.uk domain redirects with a 301 to the .com domain.

The site is hosted in the Netherlands.

Questions I have are:o Would "parking" the .co.uk domain on the .com give better results in the UK?

o Is "parking" defined clear enough? to prevent misunderstandings with our hosting partner?
Thanks
Hans

Edited by Hans, 17 June 2004 - 10:33 AM.

[mcanerin]

Hi Hans, welcome

Would "parking" the .co.uk domain on the .com give better results in the UK?

Yes, it should, as long as you have some incoming links to the .co.uk domain (otherwise, it will disappear). I would recommend parking the .co.uk on the .com and then getting some known UK directories and websites to link to the .co.uk domain (NOT the .com).

This should tell all the major SE's that it's supposed to be a UK site using as many hints as possible.

Is "parking" defined clear enough? to prevent misunderstandings with our hosting partner?

It's a pretty common term, but you are right that sometimes there is confusion. you want true parking (using CNAME) as opposed to some sort of "forwarding system" that lets you hide your domain name. In this case you want the SE's to be aware of the domain name (and in particular the .co.uk TLD) so you want to make sure it shows up and is NOT "cloaked".

Ian

[Hans]

Thanks Ian. Highly appreciated!

Best
Hans

[magician]

I have moved my French Web Site to a Canadian Hosting cie.
3 days after my DNS have been updated, I was showing in Canadian results with Google pages from Canada!

[mcanerin]

Cool, huh?

It's like magic.

Ian

[Tonemeister]

Thanks Ian.

Just checked and one week after re-submitting my .co.uk version of my domain to some directories abracadabra and there it is in google uk.

I also wrote to some of the sites with .co.uk that were linking to the .com version and asked them to change the listing to .co.uk. In addition to this I placed a copywrite notice on the bottom of the home page which has the .co.uk domain listed.

Currently google's only listing the home page, but I suppose it'll get around to the others. Am I correct?

Anyway, thanks again


and

[The Ginger Surfer]

Superb work, Ian. Many thanks.

Do you think this will work for foreign language googles too? If so, for example, German-language pages added to an established .com site would get listed in google German results with all the PR benefit they inherit from the .com. Which would be nice.

[RichardK]

Ian - many thanks for all your hard work here, really insightful. Can you clear one thing up for me though.

We have a .com domain hosted in Canada and show up well on Google.com. Our business is also targetted at the UK market though and hence we need to get a the .co.uk variant of our site (available) and park it such that it is pointing to our existing .com site. Parking as I understand it has to be undertaken by our ISP as opposed to our Domain Name Registrar (Godaddy.com) right?

Here's where things get a little foggy for me....

* I assume I do not physically need a live page such as mysite.co.uk/default.htm for this to work?
* does this mean that although the .co.uk name is 'parked', and all content will actually be served from the .com site it will still appear in the Google UK index?

Thanks for you help.

Richard

[mcanerin]

RichardK:

does this mean that although the .co.uk name is 'parked', and all content will actually be served from the .com site it will still appear in the Google UK index?

That's correct. I have not done any studies that would show how a site with multiple locals would show up, so be warned it *may* be an either/or switch. Either you are Canadian or UK, for example. I'm not certain - it's on my "to do" list for research.

One way around this is to create subsites under your main site, and park the country TLD's on different pages. You don't necessarily have to park a domain on the main page - you can park it on internal pages as well. An example of this is if you type in www.calgaryherald.com it will resolve to a subdirectory of http://www.canada.co...rald/index.html

You could just as easily have www.mydomain.ca resolve to www.mydomain.com/canada/ or whatever. This would allow you to have multiple pages catering to multiple countries. I haven't tested it, but I think the default would be that any one particular page would and could only have one country associated with it.

The Ginger Surfer:


I don't believe the use of a particular language would trip a country designation. If it did, I would not be happy. An example would be the use of french on a page tripping an assumption that the page is from France - it could also be from Canada, Belgium, or numerous other places.

The best way is to use the country TLD - ie the .de extension. I would perhaps have the german language website as a subdirectory (www.mydomain.com/deutsch/) and then resolve www.mydomain.de to it, rather than the home page.

Tonemeister

Good to hear! One way to speed things up is to have a site map that points to all the pages using the .co.uk extension rather than the .com version. That way you are telling the SE that you want all of the pages considered UK, and not just the first one.

ALL

Sorry I didn't respond to some of these questions earlier - I honestly missed them somehow

Cheers,

Ian

[RichardK]

Thanks Ian - your answer has created another idea/question!?

You make the point:

I haven't tested it, but I think the default would be that any one particular page would and could only have one country associated with it.

Following that train of thought if you created a regional entry page (e.g. mysite.com/uk/default.htm) with a view to attracting visitors from that geography but subsequently upon selecting something from a menu they moved to product pages which were generic there is the danger that those product pages could become regarded as UK pages and hence no longer appear in Google.com?

If so, could the key here be relative or absolute links from the regional sub-site? i.e. whether a link goes to /product.htm or http://www.mysite.com/product.htm affects whether any pages linked to from the sub-site may be regarded as UK or .com? The assumption being that the latter route would ensure they remain viewed as .com.

Our business is relevant in both google.com and .uk, hence I'd like to go down the safest route!

Thoughts...?

Thanks,

Richard