does google care if it is a .ca or .com

[o0_cops_0o]

does google care or pay more attention to a .com than a .ca?

[deejay]

nope.

[o0_cops_0o]

reason why im asking is because i seen on an article from a seo stating that google prefers .com's ill post it if i can find it again

[Macguru]

The country where you actually host the site will make more difference than the .tld for regional searches. For instance, Canadian Google users can opt for Canadian sites only.

I suggest all my Canadian clients to host locally. It does make a difference.

GoogleGuy claims the .tld does weight in too.

[MHes]

"The country where you actually host the site will make more difference than the .tld for regional searches"

We have a .co.uk site hosted in the States..... GG replied to one of my posts that there would be no ill effect on my 'UK SITES ONLY' rankings in google.co.uk.

So as long as you have the regional tld, why does your hosting location matter?

[Umbra]

How does one get listed on the Canada regional search? I have a site that does not appear on "Pages from Canada" probably because our site is .com and hosted on an American web server. Nevertheless, we are a Canadian site offering services only within Canada, and we have content and keywords containing the words "Canada" and "Canadian". Any ideas?

[Buckley]

Interseting! So if you have a .com domain and host in the U.S. but your business is certainly country specific (as well as international), how do you get into the country specific searches for Google?

I have this situation. .com + hosted in the U.S. but my site is very Australian in nature and my business is based in Australia......but i can't get into Google.com.au for Australian specific searches.

Any Ideas?

Sorry about the post being basically the same as above. It seems we where thinking and typing the same thing at the same time.....from opposite ends of the globe :)

[MHes]

I'm afraid you can't.

IMHO the tld is far more important than the hosting location.

ALSO, AOL and Yahoo ignore hosting location and only list regional searches with the appropriate domain.

Buy a local domain and make a new site (original content) to pick up local traffic. The saving grace is that most people search 'worldwide', even for local searching.

[JudgeJeffries]

I had exactly the same problem with a dot.info, hosted in Canada but UK specific, for some reason it appeared in Google regional UK but not in Yahoo regional after the recent changes. Went through the motions here and after taking advice started again with dot.co.uk domain and hosted on UK servers. 301 redirect, paid Yahoo (again as they ignored my polite requests to change), contacted Looksmart who immediately changed the domain (very efficient and a nice email from them) DMOZ did it automatically without a request within a couple of days (how did they know?) almost instantly into Google with the new domain and a substantial increase in trade. The unknown was however very nervewracking.

[snowfox121]

As far as I can see Google pays little attention to the hosting location and lots of attention to the tld.

widgets.com and widgets.org are completely different web sites with no relation to each other. widgets.com is hosted in the U.S.A. widgets.org is hosted in Canada.

I am searching from Canada, but searching worldwide. When I type "widgets" into the address bar and press "Enter" I end up at the .com site, not the .org site.

Would this not be because Google places more priority on a .com than a .org? Or is this strictly alphabetical? In that case, would a widgets.ca come up first? widgets.ca is a parked domain (whatever that means) but it does not come up.

[MHes]

Mistake post...sorry!

[edited by: MHes at 1:09 am (utc) on Feb. 28, 2003]

[MHes]

The hosting is relevant for non regional specific tld's because they will then qualify for the local search option.
Alphabetical... no definately not.
I'm not 100% about this but I think.....
Google will choose between two domains pointing at one site by many factors..... basically which one is more established will win, i.e. links in, server configuration, which one it new of first. etc.

[rfgdxm1]

The target audience of my main site is planetary, and it has a .ws domain name. Google seems to care less. Which makes sense if the TLD is irrelevant to the content of my site.

[Umbra]

I'm not convinced that TLDs is the most important factor. I ran a few searches for random keywords on Pages from Canada, and only a third or so have the .ca domain. The rest are mostly .com

[MHes]

"and only a third or so have the .ca domain."

The .com's will probably be Hosted in Canada, thus qualify. However, they will be missing regional listings on AOL and Yahoo as they do not have the local tld.

[yetanotheruser]

imho they must be have become pretty good at figuring it out.. Our .com shows in 'uk only'. While it's hosted in the uk, I always figured it was because our uk postal address is at the bottom of the page.

my prev. employer hosts sites for dozens of countries on lots of tdl's all hosted in the US so there must be some balancing of both factors right?

Do people think that Postal Address is a factor too?

[MHes]

Hi

Google had a competition last year for good ideas... and the guy with the postal address idea won, so yes they are aware of that concept and tactic, but I do not believe they use it .... yet.

The bottom line is for regional searches tld and/or hosting is the criteria.

On AOL and others, they filter out hosting and base results only on tld for regional searches.

[o0_cops_0o]

i have a .ca domain.. im going to purchase a .com domain and open up another website with the same information but moved around. .ca VS .com who will be the heavy weight champion?

[MHes]

Hi o0_cops_0o

Your .ca at the moment covers all the ground. A .com will just be for catching different visitors because of slightly different content and thus you will appear for slightly different searches. I suppose you will also have the security of another site should one fall out of the index.

The one which will do best is the one best optimised , most links and highest pr etc. I have just noticed that aol.ca does not restrict the results to .ca only, unlike in the uk where they will only show .co.uk (UK only search). So your .com or .ca will have equal chance for 'Canada sites only' in most search engines.

So, .ca or .com makes little difference to you, as long as the .com is hosted in Canada.

[o0_cops_0o]

well I purchase a .com domain, like you said i have backup in case one drops out of the index and hopefully catch other visitors. thanks :)