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.
