Blogspot domains localized and Google mum !!

Google has made a really weird move. It has localized the Blogspot domains for all Indian users or atleast thats what I have come to know. All the Blogspot URLs are redirecting to a .in domain if they are accessed from within India. A intial guess is that is that everybody with a Indian IP address is being redirected to the .in version. The .com version is still existing and is served to everybody with a IP address out of India. There are very far reaching implications for such a move.



UPDATE: There is a official explanation about the issue present Here. To check your .com domain put /ncr after your Blog URL and you will be redirected to the .com domain.


Till now there is no news that any other countries blogspot domain is localized. I have myself tested for .de , .ca, etc but none are redirecting to the blogspot blog. Google being mum about this move is also a very weird thing (maybe Google has been hacked !!! ).

Advantages
> As its localized to India, so Indian users can access Blogspot blogs faster. Now their request is sent to Indian servers rather than a US based server.

> For all Bloggers its in a way a good news as now they have two domains for the same blog


> Both the versions a.k.a. .com and .in are same. Any comment on the .in version will appear on the .com version as well.

> No SEO losses as such as every page has a rel=canonical tag with a .com domain


Disadvantages
> As users are distributed between these two domains there is a loss in Alexa Rankings !!!


> Page Rank is zero for the .in version !!


> Confusion: users might get puzzled that their Blog URL's have been changed.


> Unnecessary: Google could have just created a copy of blogspot blogs in every countries Servers and served the .com version faster from their.


All in all this is out-rightly weird. Even though there is a thing about serving blogs faster but changing the domain for that purpose is not a correct move. The Blogger Forum has started to fill with request about this change. Another odd thing to note is that Google is mum about this issue. There is no mention about this thing on any of their Blogs.


One thing that is coming into my mind is that ,there is ongoing hearing against Google Inc in the Delhi High Court. Even though this is just a thought but maybe this has been done to make it easy for the Indian Govt to ban Blogspot URL's in India. Something like the dreaded SOPA & PIPA. This is just a thought.


I strongly suggest that there should be option for Bloggers to choose whether they want a localized domain or not. 


What are your views about this bizarre move by Google

Written by Prayag Verma

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Post a Comment

Yes it is, I never noticed it till now!*

MUXLIMO said...

Ugh! what are they doing now..?
Im not in India, but i tried the /ncr.. and nothing different happens to my blog. just then the url has this at the end /#axzz1l2iiBWzy i dunno what it means..

@MUXLIMOIf you are in India or Australia currently ,then only the redirect will happen. For example check this http://muxlimo.blogspot.in/

The /ncr is to go to the .com domain

Ilham Blog said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

yeah its happening on my blog too. I dont know whether i should continue with the free domain, or need to go for custom domain. please suggest what to do.

Rahul Roy said...

@Nokia 5800 XpressMusicI think you should go for custom domain

@Nokia 5800 XpressMusicI totally agree with Rahul. Custom domains is a much better option if you really want to have a bit of control over the SEO

Premium said...

its not good for all the blooger about this change, there should option to choose.

Yeah you are right.. its Awkward moment .. i m so worried about it.. if Google change this thing thats the good.. and the minus point is for Indian is it should be done only in India..

Rahul Roy said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Richard said...

I haven't tried this thing as I have custom domains on Blogger. But I think that this is cool. It easily identifies what country the blog is created. Having that information, you can target which blogs you can comment so you get backlinks from sites in your own country. And I think it is beneficial to SEO.

People with custom domains remain unaffected by this change. The uncool thing about this is that it makes it easy for the specific Governments to take down blogs in their region easily. Another thing is that every Blog has multiple copies like .in ,com.au ,etc. Thats problematic as the traffic gets distributed between the different domains. This has a bit of effect on the SEO but major effect is on the Alexa Rankings.

Vikas said...

Hey friends can any one help me?
I have facing problem after changing url
I see every one change its url as abc.blogspot.com to abc.com no one change it def.com , This is the diff in my case , what i have don.

my old url was www.current-affairs-quiz-questionsanswers.blogspot.com
and new http://www.currentaffairsworld.com
My old url was very stupid so I changed it.
It redirecting properly but, Continually my rank going down, when I write new article then it is not appear in google search. and also I have lost google search on some best article , So what is happen Please help me.......
I see every one change its url as abc.blogspot.com to abc.com no one change it def.com , This is the diff in my case , what i have don.

Keep your effects persistent and your new domain will start getting traffic. When a domain is new, it is very less likely that it will get lots of traffic from search engines as it is not aware of the website's behavior (uptime, malicious activities,etc) . After a month or two there will be a steady flow of traffic from search engines

√2 said...

This happens in Hungary as well, but not only on Hungarian blogs, every blogger page I visit will end with blogspot.hu and this annoys me to hell. Any way how to prevent this from happening?