Should I use ccTLDs for sites not targeted to those countries?
Why Webmasters Stack Exchange recommends it
Webmasters Stack Exchange answerers link it as Google's own explanation of why ccTLDs such as .se, .it or novelty extensions are always geotargeted and cannot be set to generic.
Recommended by 0 people across 0 different months, 2014 to 2015.
What it is
A short 2013 Google Webmasters Help video in which a Google search quality engineer answers a viewer question about using country-code domains like .io or .im for sites that are not aimed at those countries. It explains how Google treats ccTLDs as geotargeted and why that matters for choosing a domain.
What people said
Cites Stephen Ostermiller · 2014-01 · Webmasters Stack Exchange · on “My domain "example.se" is targeted for Netherlands (.nl), but Google Webmaster Tools indicates it's targeted for Sweden”
.se is not on Google's list of generic top level domains that can be geo-targeted [LINK] . That means that Google will always treat it as targeted to Sweden and nothing can change that. You will need to create a second site on a .nl domain or on one of the generic domains from Google's list if you want to target a site to the Netherlands. Your only option is to change your domain. Google will never pick up on your back link profile or any other signal that your .se domain is actually targeted to the Netherlands. Matt Cutts explains why Google works this way in a this video [this video] .
Cites Dave Hilditch · 2014-06 · Webmasters Stack Exchange · on “Is it possible to get Google to treat a .it domain as a generic top-level domain?”
We have the option of using a .it domain which is a ccTLD (country code top-level domain). We don't want it to be specific to Italy though, we want Google to treat it as a gTLD (generic top-level domain). It seems like in Google Webmaster Tools I can't change the geo targeting to switch it off from targeting Italy, but I was wondering if there is some other way we can get Google to realize that our .it domain is really a gTLD? Here's [LINK] some details I found from Google regarding geo targeting domains. There's also this [LINK] question where user w3d [LINK] says (in reference to a .nl domain): You can only specify the region yourself if you have a generic (non-country specific) TLD such a
Cites Matt Sells · 2015-02 · Webmasters Stack Exchange · on “Should I use industry related terms when choosing a domain name for best SEO results?”
Pick a top level domain if possible. [LINK] Try to chose a shorter domain name. That will make it easier for users to remember and it will let you add more characters into the URL. Do not chose a spammy looking domain like example-example-example.com. Too many hyphens looks spammy. Avoid .biz and others like this. They also look spammy and your CTR (Click Through Rate) will suffer. Google explicitly says that if you are trying to hack a domain name to make it a novelty, like [LINK] or [LINK] be aware that Google will think the site pertains more closely to the country that those extensions are assigned to. Matt Cutt's speaks here on the subject: [this video] Audit your potential domain by going t