Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Design and Content : Impact of country domain on Google rating?

[Fionnán]

Hi again,

Does the country domain affect your position on a Google search? My site is located in Ireland and has an 'ie' domain. A friend is also located in Ireland and has a '.yoll.net' domain, which I've never heard of before. She is having great difficulty getting up the ranking. Aside from meta tags and so forth, what if any impact would her domain ending have on her Google ranking?


Thanks a million again.

[sharpnose]

Country level domain extentions should not pose as hindrance for getting a ranking.

What is needed is:
1. Relevant content
2. Backlinks from relevant sites and some directory inclusion
Ex: DMOZ .
3. also don't forget to submit in Google

[earn50]

Yes, google yahoo msn seems prefer .com, .net, .org domain in their search result in U.S.. I had great result with .co.uk domain name on yahoo .uk search engine but it wasn't even in top 100 in yahoo U.S. search engine.

[ldcdc]

I heard (but this is just hearsay) that having a .uk domain hosted in the UK generally means higher rankings at http://www.google.co.uk/

[Wullie]

Originally posted by ldcdc
I heard (but this is just hearsay) that having a .uk domain hosted in the UK generally means higher rankings at http://www.google.co.uk/

It doesn't make a difference in the normal searches, the difference comes in when you select "pages from the UK".

To get a decent ranking in the "pages from the UK" section, you need to either be hosted on a UK IP address or if you are hosted elsewhere, you need to use a UK domain extension.

[VolkNet]

Nobody will be able to tell you for sure.

There is nothing in the google patent that I remember about it.

But, IMO you dont see many .co.uk and other extension in my searches because most people want a .com

[earn50]

i also have many (.US) domain and .info none of them is rated high on google.

[The Stealthy One]

There is no difference in domain extensions in the search engines' eyes. No matter whether it's a less-common TLD or a country-level TLD, they are all rated on the same criteria - and TLD is not one of them.

[Nadabrahma]

Hmm... '.yoll.net' sounds to me like a sub-domain. I have the hunch (maybe I read it somewhere) that to get a good ranking you should have your own domain. Correct me if I'm wrong...

[The Stealthy One]

Originally posted by Nadabrahma
Hmm... '.yoll.net' sounds to me like a sub-domain. I have the hunch (maybe I read it somewhere) that to get a good ranking you should have your own domain. Correct me if I'm wrong...

I imagine that this helps, but is not necessary. I am not exactly sure on this one though.

I had not caught that the OP's domain was a subdomain! I just saw all the folks posting about their .us .info and .co.uk, etc domains! So my post further up in this thread pertains to TLDs, but I'm not sure how relevant it is to subdomains - my guess is probably not very much!

[Dan Grossman]

I've got .info domains that outrank .com and .net sites for very high competition searches. I see no penalty for the .info extension compared to .com at all.

As far as other countries, I don't know, but doubt it.