What is International Targeting (Geographic Target) in Google Search Console
Some websites have content that is primarily targeted for a particular country or language. As a result, the content of such websites will not be of high importance to the other areas in the world. The said utility in the Search Console allows you to set a geographic area which you think is the target of your website’s content. You can select a country from the given list as your target. To access this option, log into Google Search Console. Go to Search Traffic menu in the sidebar > International Targeting > Country tab as shown in the following image:
Here you will see a dropdown list of countries labeled as Target users in. Tick this box and select the country you want to target.
Benefits of Setting International Target
When you set a international target, lets say UK, your website may begin to rank higher in the Google search results delivered to the folks living in the UK. Obviously, a lot of other factors also matter in deciding the rank of your website –but setting UK as target country will let Google know that your website’s content is more useful for the people living in the UK. And therefore Google will give slightly higher priority to your website over the websites that have no such setting.
Bad Effects of Setting International Target
The downside is that your website’s ranking in other countries may fall. So, you should not play international target setting as a dirty trick. You should set a geographic target only and only if your website’s target audience really reside in a particular country. For example, if your website has Hindi language content –then it is likely that most of your traffic would come from India where Hindi is one of the main languages. In such a case, you can set India as your geographic target. For another example, if you’re a provider of certain local services in the USA –then you can safely assume that someone from Spain is not your target customer. And thus, you can set the USA as your target country.
Don’t Play with International Target Setting
You should give it a careful thought before opting for a geographic target. It’s not something to play with and do trial-and-error stuff. Soon after setting a geo target –you may find drastic change in your search rankings on various Google domains (like google.com, google.co.uk etc). If these results are not that of your liking and you wish to change geo target –it has been noticed that it takes several months for your rankings to come back to the level where they were before you got into the geo target stuff. It has also been noticed that your overall search traffic will go down because your site might be demoted in the rest of the world. Traffic slowly decreases over several months.
What’s in it for Tech Bloggers
I personally don’t think that a technology blogger should set a particular geo target in Google Search Console. Tech blogs cater to the readers all over the world and therefore should not target a specific area. For example, if you write about mobile phones –your articles will have same relevance everywhere in the world. Some people suggest that targeting countries like USA, Canada and UK will increase your Google AdSense earning. I am against this notion too. You may (and it’s a big MAY) gain on CPC because CPC from American advertisers is higher but you will lose heavily on traffic from countries like India and China. These developing countries may have low CPC but they can send large amount of qualified search traffic to your website and thereby negate the effect of high CPC from USA. Having said all that, the crux of the matter is that setting the international target is a good choice if your website really caters to a specific geographic area. But it should not be used as a tool to increase your online income by getting higher CPC. Such an attempt may prove to be counter-productive. I hope this article answered your question. Let me know what you of think about international targeting in Google Search Console. Google has removed the currency converter from API which converts the INR to dollar for paypal process. Is this because of changing the Geographic target or is there some other reason?. Thnak You Thank you so much for providing this valuable article. I am running one website. and my website is targeting many countries. Unfortunately i set my country target India. Because of this my website is ranking good in India but outside of India not. Now i want to set my country location none as i did mistake before. But fearing to lose website rank. what should i do in this case please advise. I am waiting for reply. Also, the Geographic Target feature is no longer under Site Settings. It is in the left-hand side menu under Search Traffic and it is called International Targeting. Actually my blog is in English and at first, I had selected the target country in the USA, and now I have changed the target country in Unlisted to get global traffic. But, now traffic is not coming on my website after changing the target country. Sir Can you tell me that where is my mistake, and how much take time to solve this problem. Please help me. Thanks. Thank you for providing this information but I am still in doubt regarding my website geo-targetting in webmasters tools. Actually my website is related to Sarkari Naukri / Government Jobs in India. That’s why I linked my website to geo-target of India. But I am not geting the good traffic in comparison of other website. Can you please help regarding this. Thank you for giving your valuable support in advance. Thanks again for the info :) Thank you in advance! what should I do? Thanks in advance. I want to promote my site to only the Gulf nations (set of few countries), and I am left with no choice to set any geo targeting. Its bad :( Is there a way out? Thanks in advance for your help.. Nitin I myself could to see traffic from various Eastern and Northern European countries completely vanish for my General blog etherealinsights.blogspot.in after fiddling with geo targeting techniques. Wish I had read this candid post earlier. Thanks! My hosting location is USA, but I know people do less searches in other countries about India travel. What you will be recommended. Should I continue it, or change it to default to get some abroad traffic. P.S. My website has 95% traffic from India, I want traffic from abroad (because of AdSense), but don’t want to loss current data :( Waiting for your kind response! If I do this, will I loss my all ranking in Google India? Thanks for your prior response Lalit! But I have also versions of my pages in other languages. For now I am planning AdWords for those markets, but I would like my webiste to rank in other languages too. So my QUESTION if I may is: will my search results in Polish drop in google.pl if I set International targetting (remove my target Poland)? Thank you very much. After i changed the geographic target form “Brasil” to “not listed” in my website, i have noticed a traffic drop in the following days. What can i do? Change the target again, or waiting to see the results. Can i expect a increase in the next weeks? Thank you. My website is dedicated to two countries (Brasil and Portugal), so in your opinion, i must leave the target option to “not listed”? Geo targeting is originally intended for localized services like say a local construction firm that caters to same region clients and so their domain set to geotarget the same country as they are in would make sense. Doing this just to increase Adsense CPC is shortsighted and rather discriminatory in my opinion especially in case of tech blogs and other non-localized niches because this would mean unequal treatment of visitors who visit blog looking for the same information and help purely because they come from low CPC countries. Thanks for the heads up. Comment * Name * Email * Website
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