WMT - Geographic Target for World Wide Site?

[storeowner]

Our online store ships world-wide, so the geographic target is set to "Unlisted". The site is hosted in USA.

The bulk of our customer is North American, then some European and Australian.

My question is should we change that setting to target USA only? If we make this change will the other countries be cut off from the SERPS and will our exposure to North America be improved?

We're trying to reduce alot of these non-converting countries that we are getting such as Ukraine, Indonesia, Morocco etc.

[tedster]

I would not suggest switching to a US target in WMT - yes, it may well have a negative affect on your European and Australian traffic.

If you think the non-converting traffic is not worth dealing with, you might consider block it at the server level in .htaccess. But once you switch your WMT targeting away from "unlisted" it can be a monster problem ever to go back if the traffic loss is significant.

[storeowner]

Thank you Tedster.

Does geotargeting to USA improve one's serp ranking for US searches?

US searches have better conversions for me, so if geotargeting improves serp rankings for US, I rather go that route. Any advice is greatly appreciated.

[tedster]

I've never heard any report that geo-targeting the US in WMT improves rankings over just staying "Unlisted".

[Bewenched]

I've tried it both ways with our site and it really didn't seem to make any difference what so ever.