Matt Cutts reconfirms that .co doesn’t have to be targeted to Colombia.
Despite Google clearly stating that you can opt to have your .co domain treated not just as a Colombia targeted domain, people have still spread the false notion that this isn’t the case.
Matt Cutts has posted a video in his popular video series stating that, indeed, you can target your .co web site to a different location from inside your Google Webmaster account.
I detailed how this works over a year ago.
.Co is the country code domain name for Colombia but has been commercialized for international use.
Matt Cutt’s word is the last word unless you’re a conspiracy theorist. But this should hopefully put a lot of debate to rest.
M says
Interesting to see a study showing the percentage of people that typed in .com after seeing and hearing a .co advertised.
don says
I can verify that this works, not sure how much juice the domain carries in their algo compared to .com or .org, but its possible to get .co’s to rank well.
Jonathan says
Kinda puts the whole Google Geo thing out of kilter, makes it all worthless in terms of a Geo strategy. TRY GETIING A .Co.UK or .IE domain to rank in North America ??? and nor should it. Max Cutts this is a stupid policy
Alan says
I’ll bet Matt has a bunch of .co domains for sale!
bt says
HAHA, does anyone know anything about marketing-speak/words?
He says: “at least you have the ability to do geo-targeting within the webmaster console”
BEING ABLE TO MARK “GLOBAL” or “US” WITHIN YOUR LITTLE WEBMASTER ACCOUNT DOES NOT EQUATE TO ACTUALLY RANKING GLOBALLY OR RANKING WELL.
He chose his words carefully. Nothing about ranking well. Sorry.