Google has introduced a new feature within their Webmaster Tools Section. This option is more like a “magical wand” which could help you to specify geographic location of your website, or sub-domain (irrespective of your web hosting I.P address).
Over the last few years, website owners have been facing issues while specifying targeted geo location of their website. They have been previously relying on I.P address of web hosting or using country specific domains. This feature will help website owners to specify their target geographical location for their website, or sub-domains.
Suppose, your business is based in Netherlands, but your website is hosted in US. This could result in seo ranking issues, since your website will score higher rankings within Google.com (US), rather than Google.nl (Netherlands).
This tool is accessible within Google’s Webmaster Tool as shown below:-
If you select your geographical location, then you will see following options :-
Q & A SectionQ. Please tell me first what is Google Webmaster tool ?
SEO HAWK Advice: Google has a separate webmaster tool section accessible at http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/. You need to first create an XML sitemap, and then submit it to Google. Webmaster Tool section requires you to submit your XML sitemap first. Read more about Google’s XML Sitemap : https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/docs/en/protocol.html
Q. If I specify my targeted geographic location as US, will this result in lower rankings worldwide?. I am currently receiving good traffic from UK, and other regions. 
SEO HAWK Advice: This tool has been launched recently, and website owners/seo companies are still gauging the real effectiveness of this tool.
If your website is meant for worldwide audience, then we would never recommend you to restrict your website within one particular geo location.
Q. I am having a .com domain, and this site is hosted in US. My target location is London. Is this tool helpful for me? 
SEO HAWK Advice: Yes, you can specify Country, or a specific City/Location using Google’s Geographic Targeting Tool.
However, this tool will have no effect if you try to move country specific domains out of their pre-defined geo locations ( co.uk implies UK domain). A country specific domain like .co.uk, or .com.au is meant for UK, and Australia search results respectively. Google geo targeting will not allow you to move pre-defined locations for country specific domains.
Q. Can I specify multiple targeted locations for my website? 
SEO HAWK Advice: Sorry, that feature is not available yet. Google’s geographic targeting feature allows you to target only one specific location for any single domain.
However sub-domains of your main domain (other than country specific TLD’s ) can be used to target different geographic locations around the globe.
16 responses so far ↓
1 music // Jan 8, 2008 at 6:13 pm
very interesting.
i’m adding in RSS Reader
2 cafetera-express // Feb 9, 2008 at 4:39 am
I am testing a way around to avoiding the server location issue by placing country and language tags in the head.
Any feedback or previous experience in using this tags?
3 admin // Apr 8, 2008 at 5:43 am
I love Expresso Coffee
If you have a .com domain, then adding country and language tag could help you. Along with this you should use Google geographic targeting.
You should also try to gain quality back links from websites which are ranking high within your targeted country specific search engine ( ie Google.co.uk or Google.nl).
4 Marco Rinaudo // Apr 13, 2008 at 9:57 am
we are a domain name Registrar targeting customers world wide. Our company is registered in the Bahamas and we operate from over there, but our main targets are US, Canada, UK, France, Italy, Spain, Germany. Google has automatically set our Geographic Target to Bahamas because of our domain extension (.bs). Is there a way to tell Google we are not interested at all in geo-targeting the Bahamas? We would rather prefer either no specific geo-targeting or at least the US or Canada.
5 admin // Apr 15, 2008 at 11:19 am
Hi Marco,
Search engines will always give preference to your website within a specific geo location, if your domain name corresponds to any particular geo location. A .co.uk domain will always rank higher on Google.co.uk, regardless of whether your business is based in US or UK.
Similarly your domain is getting preference on Google.bs, but you should be happy that your domain is not getting restricted in any way. If you search “internet domain registrar”, on Google.ca, Google.co.uk, or Google.com.au, you will observe your website on top page 1 and 2. This shows that your website is not getting restricted, but it is getting preference over other websites whenever somebody searches from Bahamas ( since your domain has .bs extension).
As far as Bahamas rankings are concerned, your site will always remain on top due to .bs extension. However you can try to set geo location within Google webmaster tool to USA ( but it will have little effect since you have .bs extension and not a .com extension).
The best way is to optimize your website towards Google.com (USA and UK) for your targeted keywords. This will help you gain higher rankings on Google US, and Europe. Since your website is not being restricted by Google, it will capture top rankings quickly on USA, and UK.
6 Spanish SEO // Jul 31, 2008 at 2:21 pm
One quick comment: this geographic targeting tool should NOT be used for targeting languages because of the restrictive market coverage that will create. This is more for locations than anything else.
Also, this is not the best option for regional TLDs like .asia, which have not been clearly determined by big daddy as of this day.
Nice sum up!
7 admin // Aug 1, 2008 at 5:40 am
You can still use .asia domain to target any location of your choice.
There are several instances where .com.au domains are ranking on top of Google.ca. Several websites with .co.uk extensions could be spotted on top pages of Google.com (*USA). There is no fixed rules when it comes to geographic targeting.
We did try using this tool, but found that it wasn’t successful in shifting rankings from one geo location to another. Anyhow you can still try to mention geographic target location of your website.
Google trusts data provided by its live crawler OR search bot, rather than any of its webmaster tools. However, you can still try to use geographic targeting as this is the only tool provided by google to specify geo location of your website.
8 Spanish SEO // Sep 12, 2008 at 6:18 am
Sorry for the late reply. Did not get the reply until tonight
Given the localization and local search technology Google has, it’s more difficult for a regional TLD to rank high in local results. Plus the trust factor a TLD like .asia cannot be compare to a neutral TLD like .com.
It’s true that we see .au and .co.uk in US results for global searches, but they obey to factors like trust, link profile, content scarcity, etc. However, they don’t appear when we’re talking about more specific local search results (gl=us).
Mind sharing a bit more about that domain transference? I see that issues with domain trust and link profile more than anything else. I’m sure, results may be a bit different for a .co.uk than a .nl.
Server responses will definitely feed the bot and will influence ip delivery. But it’s also well known that gbot sometimes do not take all the header responses and preferences.
You need the comment subscription plugin
9 john // Nov 10, 2008 at 1:17 am
i have a site hosting from UK and domain is.com, but my keywords are on 1st postion in google.co.in and not ranking in .com and co.uk , what would be the reason for the same. pls help me ASAP.
10 admin // Nov 10, 2008 at 1:19 am
Hello John,
Some of the reasons could be as given below :-
1) Your website uses India Address in WHOIS or might have used India hosting in the past.
2) You are not having enough links from UK region in order to score rankings in Google.co.uk
3) (Most Powerful) : Your website is listed in INDIA category of DMOZ. This could be the reason why your site is sticking to google.co.in
However, you can try to gain links from sites with .co.uk in order to score higher rankings on Google.co.uk.
I hope it will help you
11 johannes m. // Nov 10, 2008 at 1:20 am
we (www.source-promo.com) target the uk market and have used the webmaster tools to tell google. our server is located in germany.
we cant explain but wonder why our website ranks pretty well in the very compeditive US market google.com for most of our keywords like promotional items (page 2) but ranks lousy on the uk market (page 15-20)
most of our links come from us websites but this shouldnt be a problem since http://www.ideasbynet.com have fairly the same kinds of links and uses a dotcom domain as well. they rank first on google.co.uk.
can you explain that???
if i say google at its webmaster tools that i target the uk market does it understand or is it just one factor out of many?
12 admin // Nov 10, 2008 at 1:21 am
Hello Johannes,
Your competitor site is listed in UK category of DMOZ.
Moreover, they have plenty of links from UK region as compared to your website.
Your links are mostly from US region and this is the reason why Google is giving preference to your rankings on Google.com ( USA) rather than Google.co.uk.
As far as geographic tool by Google is concerned, it becomes negligible if you have plenty of links from another region whereas you have mentioned some different region in webmaster tool.
If you have same percentage of links from US, UK then mentioning UK region in Google geographic tool can help.
Try to get some nice links from UK region and your site will be ranking on Google.co.uk too
13 Zev // Nov 26, 2008 at 1:03 pm
It would be helpful if Google allowed you to specify geo locations for different sections of your site. There was mention of this originally when this tool was first launched, but I havn’t seen anything to this effect added yet. Does anyone know if this is still in future plans?
14 Harpy´s Nightmare // Jan 9, 2009 at 9:16 pm
I agree with Admin: I have been looking for info on the fact that:
1. when I use google.com to search for my site its 2nd.
2. when I use google.com.co (target market) the site is at 30 - 40 position: and I am searching from the target market country.
So: the local browser DOES make a difference and probably relates to TARGET MARKET SITE LINKS as suggested by admin.
15 Johannes M. // Feb 8, 2009 at 5:24 am
@ admin. do you think it would help if i change to an UK server??
do you know anybody whow offers just UK links?? i havent found anybody.
thank you very much!!
16 Johannes M. // Feb 8, 2009 at 4:03 pm
PS: I have already used the webmaster tools to tell google that we target the UK.
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