Effect of Non .ie Domain on Irish Company

Serbian

Hey,

I am just wondering what the effect (if any) of having a non-ie domain for an Irish Company. I do realise that many companies have .com, which is not affiliated to any country, but if I wanted to register the domain ,say runn.er which is the TLD for Eritrea, would that have any effect on someone searching for people selling shoes in Ireland? (either by selecting only search Irish sites on Google, or people typing the phrase "Irish shoe stores").

Personally, I can't think of any reason why this should be an issue, but it did raise the question, what determines where a site is located by Google. Is it the proportion of visitiors from a certain country? IP of webserver? Content?

Any answers on this would be greatly appreciated.

Serb

garthv

if i had an irish company i would prefer a .ie addy but theres a few alternatives to that anyway,you could always put ireland in your web address eg: www.mycompanyireland.com or something similar

FreeHost

I don’t think anybody can give a definitive on the Google algorithm, however, I have done a little experimenting with it, and my result is a combination of the domain extension (ie) and the IP address of the site.

An example of this is a “.co.uk” site I’m hosting (here in Ireland) is down around page 4 on Google.ie - it’s on page 7 of Google.com but it’s on the first page of Google.co.uk … I was using the same keywords on each search.

If your geographical target market is Ireland, then maybe go for the .ie

Serbian

That's interesting FreeHost. Thanks for sharing that. Indeed the target market of this site would be predominantly, if not entirely, Irish. I do have my own reservations about using non .ie / .com and I think I have been swayed. It has been interesting to look at how Google evaluates the geographics of sites.

mneylon

Try searching for a variety of "Irish" keyphrases using a geo-specific basis on any national version of Google.
The results can be both interesting and amusing ...

RobertFoster

it may be wise to get the .com at the same time as I sometimes find people type the .com automatically.

steve-hosting36

Hosting the site on Irish IP's has the biggest impact, so check with your host

mneylon

As Steve said...

To prove it:
irish hosting - google uk only results

Google IE only results

As you can see clearly only Irish hosting companies with colo space and IPs in Ireland will be listed under Google.ie "pages from Ireland"