Geo Location Targeting in Google SERPs
- Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Signals for country specific websites
Last month Matt Cutts buzzed about Google top signals for country specific websites, which was:
1. Country Code TLD (ccTLD) such as .de or .fr – It makes sense when a website address is having country code (ccTLD), it is very easy to figure out which part of the world the website belongs to.
Example: See the following sample web addresses:
- www.example.in
- www.example.cn
- www.example.de
- www.example.fr
- www.example.co.in
- www.example.co.jpg
The country code in the web address makes it is really easy for anyone to figure out which website belongs to which country.
2. Geo Targeting in the Web Master console: The Google Webmaster Tools is a very useful tool and you can easily specify your website Geographic Target. This option will only let Google know about your Geo Location but not to Bing or Yahoo!
Geo Targeting in the Web Master console (click on the image to enlarge)
3. IP Address: The IP Address of your web server is very important in Geo-targeting. Google will try to match Search results to websites that target the same Geographic location. So if your website is www.example.uk it makes sense to having Hosting Location from UK only.
There may be other signals, but those are the biggies and the order that I'd put them in. - The other signals to let Google know where your website location belongs to and get higher ranking in Local Search could be:
META Tags: You can use META Language and Street Address (ZIPCODE, STATE, CITY).
<meta name="zipcode" content="90210, 560038" />
<meta name="city" content="new york, bangalore">
<meta name="country" content="india, japan, italy">
<meta name="geography" content="United States, Australia">
<meta name="language" content="spanish">
<meta http-equiv="content-language" content="fr, it, de, nl">Google search engines give a lot of weight to geo-location, even when the user does not select a country specific search. So it will influence all users on which Google site they use (Google.co.in, Google.co.uk). Your website will be performing better in Google.co.in or Google.co.uk than it will in the other Google site.
Joydeep Deb is a Senior Digital Marketer and Project Manager with strong experience in Digital Marketing, Lead Generation, Online Brand Management, Marketing Campaigns, Project Management, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Search Engine Marketing (SEM), PPC, eMail Marketing, Web Analytics, Web Technologies, Web Design and Development.
With an MBA in Marketing. IIM Calcutta Alumini. Lives in Bangalore, Karnataka - India.