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May 9, 2008

Does Setting Your Geographic Target In Google Webmaster Tools Work?

Google Missing The Target?Back in October of 2007, Google launched Set Geographic Target in Google Webmaster Tools. It basically allowed you to tell Google if your site is based in a certain geographic location. For example, let's say you had a UK site, using a .com domain - Google would often not give the site any preference in the Google UK search results, unless it had a co.uk TLD. The Set Geographic Target option was suppose to give Google more clues about the site and help it rank better in the local that was specified with the tool.

A Google Groups thread leaves me to believe that it might not be the case. Susan Moskwa, an official Google representative said:

Using the tool to target example.com to the UK may have some effect on non-country-restricted searches, but it probably won't be the same as having example.co.uk. Most sites will see results somewhere between the two extremes (no effect, and total equivalence with ccTLDs).

Wait, so are you saying setting your geographic target may or may not have an impact on how your rank in a localized version of Google? Let me bold Susan's response, " Most sites will see results somewhere between the two extremes (no effect, and total equivalence with ccTLDs."

Hmm and I not understanding the response? I am not sure. I have seen dozens of posts complaining that the tool doesn't improve their ranking in the localized Google version. In fact, respected SEO, David Naylor just posted a blog post with the title, Google Webmaster Tools smoke n mirrors. In that post, he expresses his dissatisfaction with the tool and describes how it simply doesn't work for him.

Does it work for you? Please do comment with your feedback, if you have any.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.



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posted rustybrick in Google Optimization at May 9, 2008 7:37 AM Comments (3)

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Comments

I know of 1 very large website that has it's UK sub-directory which is hosted in the states. The directory ranks very well on Google UK including UK only pages. They have set this up purely through the webmaster tools. I think large international websites were the reason they introduced the feature, so it sort of makes sense that it has started working for these sites 1st. I am really hoping that this tool does work and that the one that I know about is not just a one off.

 

Posted by David Eaves at May 9, 2008 09:02

Well, it doesn´t work for me either. When looking at top search queries the different results based on SERPs are gigantic, not to mention if I select other country than USA. I totally agree with David, the only thing that I really take care of in webmaster tools is the sitemap analysis.

 

Posted by Carlos F Munoa at May 12, 2008 10:09

The tool does do what you said--it gives us more clues about the site. However, it's not the only factor we consider when determining which geographic region a site is most relevant to. For example, if you had a .com that was all in Russian, talking about Russian geography, and had a ton of incoming links from .ru sites, but you set its geographic target to Colombia, we might be skeptical.

As mentioned recently on our blog (http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/where-in-world-is-your-site.html), you should also see results in country-restricted searches: e.g. if a site uses our tool to target Colombia and a searcher restricts her search to "only pages from the UK," that site shouldn't appear in her results.

 

Posted by Susan Moskwa at May 12, 2008 18:24

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