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Localized Domain Names to Increase Local Traffic, the Next Big Thing?

Localized Domain Names to Increase Local Traffic, the Next Big Thing?

Darren Rowse spins off a question asked on Twitter, regarding if it’s worth it to get a local domain name to better drive traffic in your region. While he says he’s no expert, here’s the conclusion:

Search engines are focusing more and more on localized search and indexing and promoting local search results to users. While less people use these local search tools than the global ones there is still a market and the traffic they generate can be significant. So yes – I definitely think targeting local markets with local domains can be very worthwhile.

This post is, by the way, in Darrens really cool reader question segment, where he uses 3 minutes to answer a question, and then flips it to the commenters. Great usage of a blog community, in my opinion!

Anyway, I’d reckon that there’s a lot of people that know more of this than I do, but I do find it easier to get higher ranks in local search results if you have A] the local top level domain (like .se for Sweden or .co.uk for the UK), and B] the local language of the region. Think about it, if you go to a local version of Google, you’ll be able to pick if it should only search in the country’s language, or pages from the country in question. Here’s where the TLD and language comes in, but I suspect that it also affects rankings since a google.com search while render different results than google.se, even if I haven’t opted to search locally.

See Also
Google AI Update

Maybe someone else knows more of this?

View Comments (3)
  • I’ve always thought that more localized web sites on the Internet are going to be big money in just a few years, especially with the relevancy of local broadcast TV networks getting lower and lower and newspapers business model dying quick. A web site that could combine local news in the form of podcasts, articles, and weather reporting could make some big money and be something a lot of people would visit.

  • This will definitely help out local business owners. Most small businesses simply cannot match the amount of web content that a global corporation can output. So of course, it makes sense that the global companies will bury local firms in the current search model.

    For large corporations this will obviously cut into their business, but it seems like there’s no way around it. Local search will gain ground in the coming years.

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