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Background

A site has multiple ccTLDs:

  • example.com/miami-hotel for people in the US,
  • example.co.uk/miami-hotel for UK users,
  • example.de/miami-hotel for Germany,
  • example.fr/miami-hotel for France,
  • etc.

Searching for certain city keywords will return a list of Google+ Local (formerly Places):

International local search

Each links to the corresponding company website that is visible.


Problem

When searching on www.google.de, the domain of the site intended for US users (example.com) appears instead of the corresponding ccTLD (example.de) aimed at German users.

This applies to all languages.

In my opinion and for the purposes of this business, it's not good user experience: searchers would most likely prefer to book on a site localized for them (e.g. in their language and currency).


Question

Is it possible to return different ccTLDs in these local search listings for users across the globe?

Currently, Google+ Local seems to only support supports adding a single "Website" field.


Solutions I have considered

  • Creating duplicate Google Places listings for each URL would be spammy (and not viable when there's 100s of locations, each needing a listing in 8 languages).
  • I don't see the hreflang annotation helping either, and GWMT geotargeting is already set.
Baumr
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  • You can add the same business multiple times under different addresses, Google local only depends on a physical address and you can have the same businesses added multiple times with multiple addresses. ccTLD's generally have no role when it comes to ranking in Google local since Google local works mostly off citations, unless I've mistaken your question. Please note that I'm referring to adding one domain per a address, if you want rankings in lots of locations on one domain then I believe this is not currently possible and very unlikely will never happen... It's for local businesses. – Simon Hayter Jun 26 '13 at 18:48
  • Not for corporations with an office in every city of the world, a Good example of this is how Hilton hotel have worked around it, by setting up another domain and then adding that to Google local.. Take a look at your picture. – Simon Hayter Jun 26 '13 at 18:54
  • Thanks, but let me clarify: if a hotel is in many cities throughout the US, then it'll have multiple addresses and multiple Google+ Local listings have already been created. No problems there. However, the issue here is that each listing can only have a single URL showing — and showing a .com URL to German users does not make business or user experience sense — what is the solution? Create several listings for a single address with different ccTLDs? (Doesn't seem like a good idea.) – Baumr Jun 26 '13 at 23:05
  • In the screenshot you used you can see that Hilton Hotel have setup another domain to target locally which makes more sense than having to manage lots of them on one domain, you could use this method, while it may seem spammy its pretty legit and better way of working. Also in terms of user experience ccTLD does not add anything in this sense, while it may seem to make more sense to use a .de for Germany and .co.uk for UK its not a requirement and 100,000's of company's prefer to operate on the TLD level rather than the ccTLD in fact many of my customers use the .com for local in UK. – Simon Hayter Jun 27 '13 at 13:36
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    The majority of people who use the internet don't even know what a CCTLD is, also most people don't even look at this element before clicking on Google, the primary focus points are the Title and Description, and now Rich Snippets - I'd assume myself, you and other techys would look at the TLD element but others wouldn't. Just my 2 cents ;) – Simon Hayter Jun 27 '13 at 13:38
  • Thanks for your replies, would be interesting to see a source for the ccTLD stuff if you know one? Anyway, it's not really so much about the domain they see in the listing (although that should be whatever the target is), but where they're brought to when they click it. In this case, it'd be best for a German to be brought to a .de site directly from there, .fr for France, etc. (But perhaps that will become more redundant due to Google's new carousel for local results) – Baumr Jun 27 '13 at 13:43
  • Unfortunately, in this case, setting up a separate domain for each location isn't viable as there's 1000s — plus, all ccTLDs already exist with pages for each location; so a site migration would outweigh the benefits – Baumr Jun 27 '13 at 13:58
  • P.S. Maybe make an answer with some of this stuff? More readable for other people than these long paragraph comments :D – Baumr Jun 27 '13 at 13:59

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