Just recently we were assisting a young company with a roll-out of a new domain "opus.io" Taking a look in the Google Webmaster we noticed the Geotargetable domains was not configurable.
Hrm, it is for other domains we operate. Well, it’s not changeable for .io – but many others are OK.
As usual, domain sellers hype this. And of course Google provides explicit instructions on how to configure Geotargeting.
You can watch what Matt says about it to get the complete story.
GeoTargeting Summary
I’m thinking it breaks down to these two points.
- There are 38 blessed non-targeted domains
- Other domains are country targeted, "swimming up-stream" to target others
What this means for opus.io is that, it will be seen by Google as more relevant to the British Indian Ocean Territory than US or UK visitors.
Make sure your domain falls in this blessed list for best global visibility, and specifically target that TLD when necessary. You can use this tool to check.
Here’s to hoping that Google adds .io to their list of blessed domains soon.
Also, aren’t TLDs going to be opened wide-up soon? So, that makes gTLD, rTLD and gccTLD stuff less relevant?