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Matt Cutts releases new video about using ccTLDs for generic purposes

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Cutts explains when Google decides to make a ccTLD global.

Google’s SEO/Webspam leader Matt Cutts has released a new video about using a country code top level domain name for a website not targeted to that country.

His message is the same that Google has been giving for many years, but he added some more color about how the company decides what should become generic.

Google makes some domains globally targeted because they’ve been widely adopted for global use rather than country use. .Co and .TV are examples.

What if you want to use .li for Long Island or .ky for Kentucky?

Cutts said you probably shouldn’t get ahead of yourself.

For .li, the country code for Liechtenstein, Cutts said they looked into it and found that the domain is widely used in Liechtenstein. Thus, it wouldn’t be right to give it a global meaning.

He also gave .ky (Cayman) as an example.

Here are the ccTLDs Google treats as generics (as of today): .ad, .as, .bz, .cc, .cd, .co, .dj, .fm, .io, .la, .me, .ms, .nu, .sc, .sr, .su, .tv, .tk, .ws.

Note that .ly, a popular extension that belongs to Libya, is not on the list.

Matt Cutts: don’t park your domain right before launching a web site

by — Domain Parking 13 Comments

Cutts recommends taking down a parking page about a month before launching a new site.

Google web spam czar Matt Cutts just published a video in which he asks himself a question (rather than taking it from the community): should I keep a domain name parked before I launch a web site?

In short, Cutts says no.

He works in a reference to eNom’s backpack girl and then goes on to explain that Google has a filter to try to keep parked domain names out of its search results.

This filter doesn’t immediately know when a domain changes from a parked page to a “real” web site, so he recommends putting up a placeholder page 3-4 weeks before launching a site.

That placeholder page can be something as simple as “coming soon” with a few lines of text — just make sure it’s not an ad-filled parking page.

Here’s the video:

ccTLD Most Important Factor in Google Location Determination

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Targeted a specific country? Get your ccTLD.

It’s no secret that Google uses several factors to determine where a web site is “located” and thus determine its relevance to each individual searcher. But there has been a lot of debate about which factors are most important.

The two I hear mostly commonly are if the domain has a particular country code domain name and where the web host is.

Now Google search-spam czar Matt Cutts has laid it out on the table.

One person asked a question that we forgot to make a video for: “Can you list in order of importance the things that make a site to be seen by google as a site from a particular country?” Since we didn’t make it as a video, here’s the answer as a quick bonus:
1. country code TLD (ccTLD) such as .de or .fr
2. geotargeting in the webmaster console
3. IP address

There may be other signals, but those are the biggies and the order that I’d put them in.

What those “other signals” are is unclear. Perhaps the whois information matters. But Cutt’s response verifies that the most important thing in determining what country your web site is in is the country code top level domain name. Many people also know that IDNs are good for targeted a specific language.

Go Straight to Google for SEO Truths

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Matt Cutt’s video series is worth watching.

There are a lot of half truths in the search engine optimization industry. So it’s refreshing to get an inside take from Google’s traveling search guru, Matt Cutts. I recommend watching his video series on YouTube.

As you know, I don’t usually recommend watching videos. But Cutts “cuts” to the chase (sorry, couldn’t help myself), answering the question in the first 30 seconds of each clip and then explaining his answers. Here are some of the questions Cutts answers in his videos:

-Should I use hyphens or underscores as separators in URLs? (A: Hyphens)

-How much does a domain’s age affect its ranking (A: Nothing really now, but this might matter in the future. Google filed a patent on this, but as of February this year it hadn’t implemented it.)

-Is redirecting a large number of domains suspicious? (A: Not necessarily. Google redirects a bunch of typos.)

-Does the position of keywords in the URL affect ranking? (A: Barely)

-Why does Google index blogs faster than other sites? (A: It may index them faster, but it may be just the blog index.)