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Some time ago I bought a "cool" domainname to match my username, namely, wol.ph. After looking in the Google Webmaster Tools recently it told me that the Geographic Target for my domain is understandably the Philippines.

Since the Webmaster Tools don't allow me to change the target I was wondering if this will actually affect my site negatively and if I should just move the site to a different domain for it to show up in rankings.

So... should I move my site to a different (.com, .org, .net, etc.) tld?

Zistoloen
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Wolph
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2 Answers2

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When you website is targeted to a specific country, you will rank better in that country and much worse everywhere else in the world.

Unless your top level domain is on Google's list of generic top level domains, you won't be able to use it for a website that targets a global audience and gets traffic from Google search.

Stephen Ostermiller
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You shouldn't experience too many issues, since, as a common example, .to (Tonga) is a common ccTLD that is outside Google's accepted generic ccTLD list of country-level top-level domains.

If you are concerned, then adding additional signals to inform Google that your site is more widely targeted than the Philippines can help.

Zistoloen
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Mike Hudson
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