Leosghost - 10:55 am on Dec 19, 2006 (gmt 0)

If you already have German language content that's indexed / ranked decently in search engines, then I'd hesitate starting over, but otherwise yeah, I think putting German language content (or, more specifically, Germany-audience-targeted content) on a .de domain is a good idea.

another G policy which favours only the big guys ..how is a mom and pop site or a small business supposed to put it's content aimed at for example French or Australian audiences on those TLD's ..both of those require to be either a citizen of those countries or to have physical business presence ( in France that will cost you around $7,000.oo to $10,000.oo per year for the physical presence ..or $2,500.oo followed by $7,000.oo per year in charges and fees per year to have a french lawyer do it for you ..even if you make not one red centime of turnover ) ..

So in G's eyes these two countries at least should have closed internet economies where ( due to their TLD requirements ) only businesses and citizens of said countries should expect to be found in their serps ..

You ..G..( with your 85% market share here ) dont want the rest of the worlds websites to be visible from here?..you dont want that we should buy from elsewhere? or get our info in a language other than french?

This kind of heavy handed geo targetting is going against the free flow of goods , services and information that the internet was supposed to be promoting ..google does not know best about what the surfer wants ..if we dont choose regional ..then dont force it ..either directly via serps ..nor weighting TLD's to the languages ..

Already the results from " the rest of the world " are heavily skewed in France to send me back predominantly french language results based on the IP number allocated by my french ISP ..If I want french languge results I'll say so by using the radio buttons to choose it ( respect that choice and stop filtering even "web" to weight it to mean from France ).. quit trying to second guess me and the other one million or so English mother toungue speakers and the other million or so anglophones here.. who would like to be able to choose results from the world web ..and actually get just that ..