All local domains from Google will be integrated into Google.com

In a decision that marks a before and after in how we browse and measure the Internet, Google has announced that it will begin to automatically redirect all local domains, such as google.fr, google.com.ar, or google.ng, to the main domain: google.com.

The decision, which will be implemented starting today but rolled out gradually over the coming months, aims to simplify the user experience without affecting the local relevance of the results. That is, although we will no longer access google.es, the search engine will continue to show us results relevant to the country we are in. Meaning that if you are in Spain, the results provided by Google will be relevant for spaniards.

“Our goal is to provide the most useful information possible, which often includes search results relevant at the local level,” explains Google. “Historically, as part of our process to provide localized results, we have used country code top-level domain names (ccTLDs), such as google.ng for Nigeria or google.com.br for Brazil.

Over the years, we have improved our ability to offer a local experience. In 2017, we began offering the same experience with local results for all Search users, whether they used google.com or their country’s ccTLD.

Thanks to this enhancement, country-level domains are no longer necessary. Therefore, we will begin redirecting traffic from these ccTLDs to google.com to optimize the user experience in Search. This change will be rolled out gradually over the coming months, and during the process, you may be asked to re-enter some of your search preferences.

It is important to note that, while this update will change what people see in their browser’s address bar, it will not affect how Search functions nor change how we handle obligations under national laws.

What this change implies

Practically speaking, users will continue to see local content (such as Spanish news or nearby business information) thanks to geolocation and the search engine’s use of user preferences. This has been happening for some time now. However, the visible address in the browser’s bar will always be google.com, regardless of the country we are in.

A change that, by the way, does not seem to surprise everyday users, who probably will not even notice the change. Right now, if you type “google” in the Chrome search bar, Google’s browser, the default results already come from a Google.com URL (and in fact, Google.com ranks higher than Google.es for the search “Google”):

A hit to domain segmentation

For those working in organic positioning (SEO) or international brand expansion, country code domains (ccTLDs) like .es, .fr, or .cl have historically been useful tools for segmenting audiences and gaining local visibility. With this decision, Google reduces the weight of that signal. From now on, it is expected that factors like content in the local language, geolocation, the use of Google Search Console to define target region, and links from local sites will become even more important.

Variations in referral traffic

One of the most relevant side effects of the change that Google will implement relates to referral traffic, a key indicator in web analytics.

Referral traffic is that which arrives at a website from another domain. For instance, until now, when a user in France conducted a search and clicked on a result, their visit could be recorded as coming from google.fr. This allowed website administrators, marketing agencies, and SEO specialists to know with considerable precision from which country and domain the visits were coming, simply by analyzing referrers in tools like Google Analytics.

With the new policy of unification under google.com, this differentiation disappears. Following the change, all search traffic will appear as coming from google.com, regardless of whether the user is in Mexico, Spain, or South Africa. This implies a loss of granularity in reports, as it will no longer be easy to distinguish whether that traffic is coming from Spanish, French, or users from any other country, at least not by the referral domain.

In any case, remember that Google Analytics collects information about users’ geographic locations through their IP addresses. This information will continue to be available in your audience reports. Therefore, even though the referrer will no longer indicate the local Google domain used, you can still segment your traffic by country.

An impact on digital “ranking”

This impact is more anecdotal, but equally noteworthy. As mentioned, Google.es has historically been one of the most visited domains in Spain, consistently occupying the top 3, although always surpassed by Google.com. With this transition, the traffic previously attributed to google.es will become part of the global domain, which will inevitably alter the rankings of the most visited sites nationally.

Uncertainty

Of course, despite what we have mentioned, any major change by Google makes industry professionals very attentive to its unanticipated (or unannounced) implications. In this case, doubts have also arisen within the SEO community:

Globalization or simplification?

From a technical standpoint, the change makes sense. Google has been evolving for years towards a unified search experience, based on artificial intelligence and personalization. But it also raises questions about the loss of regional digital autonomy and the transparency in measuring audiences by country.

In any case, what is clear is that google.es will cease to exist as we knew it. What does not disappear is the challenge of understanding how this transformation affects the digital ecosystem: from rankings and SEO to audience analysis and the way we understand the web by regions.

A more global web, yes. But perhaps also more difficult to measure with local precision.

Image: ChatGPT