I came across a recent article at Domain Name Wire that cited a PCPro.co.uk article announcing that Google will rank .co as international domain if the content is globally targeted, as opposed to just ranking them for Colombia.
The article states:
While the .co domain is still assigned to Colombia at the moment, a Google spokesperson said that would soon change. “We will rank .co domains appropriately if the content is globally targeted. Webmasters will soon have the functionality to be able to specify this by using the geotargeting options in Google Webmaster Tools.”
I really don’t see this as a big deal nor an extra benefit to buying .co domains as international targeting is common. Here are a few other Google searches returning country code domains outside of the native country:
- “url shortener” returns bit.ly as the #1 ranking (Liberia)
- “despicable me movie” returns despicable.me as the #1 ranking (Montenegro)
- “justin” returns popular live video streaming site Justin.tv (Tuvalu)
- “matt” returns WordPress creator Matt Mullenweg’s blog (Trinidad and Tobago)
- “free internet radio” returns Last.fm (Federated States of Micronesia)
Now the real bonus would be if Google were to give .co domains the exact match bonus internationally as is done with .com, .net, and .org. I don’t see that happening anytime soon though.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
another benefit is the typos. also if the generic domain name in .com is parked then chances of going to the top pages of google is much higher by doing seo.
Not sure though – If Google is showing all those results with a different extensions for content you search then why would .co be treated differently? I’ve just bought a domain called http://www.genericpharmacy.co – has not been indexed yet but I am sure it will in a couple of weeks.
-J
I have two .co domains. The ranks are getting higher everytime I conduct link building. However both are still on page 2 and 3 in Google.