Web addresses are all about location

If you run an online business and want to increase sales by boosting your showing in Google search results, learning how to change or add a foreign domain might do the trick.

Say you’re trying mightily to sell your homemade whoopee cushions in Australia. Your Web address, www.mywhoopee.com, does OK on the search results someone can load in the States. But you’ve checked with friends in Australia, and your site doesn’t score very high. That’s because Google scores results a bit differently in other countries, giving higher value to those in a given country domain.

So what you do is acquire a Web address for www.mywhoopee.com.au. If you were trying for the same impact in Germany, you’d create a Web address for www.mywhoopee.com.de.

The nice thing about this is you don’t have to physically have that address hosted — physically located — in Australia or any other country. You just add that address and make sure Google finds it. The search company’s software will assume the site is based in Australia or Germany.

This feature is clearly something that affects the Google search results. Mileage may vary with other search engines, according to the experts who discuss this and other issues on searchenginewatch.com, one of the foremost sites for tracking search concerns.

If you’re searching only for domains in a given country, here’s what you do. Go to Google’s Advanced Search option. Then, in the choice for domain, place the specific country you want to include. You can do the same thing to exclude any national domain.

To find a full list of all international domain addresses, try: www.countrydomains.com.