What does moving from country domains to one gTLD achieve?

This article argues for a shared gTLD with country directories. But there are cases where the switch achieves nothing or does harm. So make the decision for your project based on your own data.

Case study 2014 to 2017 with one company in three markets

A European software company, active in twelve countries at the time, began in 2014 to move its country websites from separate domains into directories of a shared .com domain. Eoghan Henn supported the project as a consultant and had access to the figures. The company agreed to the publication of the figures, but we still do not name it.

Austria

The growth in Austria cannot be attributed to the domain change alone, because a redesign went live at the same time. That is why it is worth looking at the UK, where the two happened separately.

United Kingdom, there and back

There, the redesign a few weeks before the move brought no visible change. The jump only came with the switch to the /gb/ directory. In May 2017, the UK team nevertheless wanted its own domain again and moved to a .co.uk. The new domain could not hold the rankings. It also competed with the international English version on the .com, which in some cases ranked ahead of it in the UK. After the return to the shared domain, visibility recovered.

Germany

The drop directly after the move had several causes. The main cause, however, was redirect chains. IT had a finished list of old and new URLs. Instead of implementing it directly, they first redirected every old URL one-to-one to the new domain and from there to the target. As a result, 99 percent of the old URLs went through a chain.

What stood out later was that visibility fluctuated almost simultaneously in all three markets. Markets on one domain are closely linked, for better or worse.

A second case

A manufacturer of mobile devices for hazardous areas moved only its UK version from a .co.uk to the global .com, where all other countries already were. There were no other changes. Organic traffic in the UK grew noticeably afterwards. Similar results show up in examples that fellow specialists have shown us without releasing the data.

Bartosz Góralewicz documented the picodi.com case publicly in 2016. Around 23 country domains moved into directories on the .com. Visibility then rose clearly in most markets, while it fell in Russia.

Correlation is not causation

A case study shows a connection in time, but no proof. Over three years, competition, content and Google's systems all change, and there was no control group without a move. Two observations give the finding more weight. The markets moved together after the merger, and in the UK the effect reversed when the team went back to its own domain. Public case studies are still rare. Moves like this do not happen often, and most companies keep their numbers to themselves.

Why can merging help?

Strictly speaking, it is rarely about ccTLD versus gTLD. In the case study, only one of the three old domains was a country domain. It is about many domains versus one domain.

The obvious explanation is signals from links. What one country version gets in links from other websites benefits the other versions more easily if they are all on the same domain. In 2018, Barry Adams explained this with a stronger PageRank damping factor for links between domains than within a domain. Stephen Kenwright describes country domains and subdomains as separate websites that each need their own SEO budget. Both count subdomains as separate websites. This fits the subdomain versus subfolder debate, for which Rand Fishkin collected fourteen cases in 2018. Google has confirmed none of these theories.

In its documentation on international websites, Google itself lists subdomains and subdirectories as two variants on a gTLD. According to Google, subdomains make it easier to separate sites and to use different server locations. Subdirectories are easier to maintain because everything sits on one host. The documentation does not say that either variant ranks better.

Pinterest went the other way. The company moved from subdomains on a gTLD to country domains and grew internationally. But it had previously used subdomains, which gained little from shared signals anyway. The case shows that country domains have advantages too.

When does it not work?

• One strong and several weak domains. In the failed cases we have seen, a domain with good links was usually merged with several weak ones. Successful cases were those in which several country domains already had a history and decent links.
• Short-term losses. A domain change almost always costs visibility at first, especially on a new domain without a history. Calculate beforehand whether the possible gain outweighs the loss in strong markets.
• Shared negative signals. Bad links or lots of weak content in one market can affect all markets after the move, in the future too.
• Brand and trust. Some companies use a different brand in each country. In some countries, users trust the country domain more than a .com.

What do experts say?

In 2018, Eoghan Henn asked five international SEO experts whether an international website can benefit from moving several country domains to one gTLD.

How to carry out the move

1. Redirect straight to the target. All rules sit on the old domain and point to the final URL without an intermediate step. Google recommends avoiding chains and follows at most ten hops.
2. Keep old domains and certificates. Redirects from https URLs only work with a valid certificate for the old domain. Google recommends keeping redirects for at least one year, and permanently from the users' point of view.
3. Report the change of address. With the Change of Address tool in Search Console, you can also move a domain into a directory of another domain. The tool works at domain level, and each subdomain variant needs its own request. The signals apply for 180 days.
4. Set hreflang correctly. All country and language versions reference each other, including a self-reference. More on this in the hreflang guide.
5. Update your own links. Social media profiles, industry directories, Google business profiles and websites you maintain yourself. For important third-party links, a short email is worthwhile.
6. Check every old URL after go-live. Status, target and number of hops, sorted by clicks before the move.

This is what the difference between a direct redirect and a chain looks like.

How to test redirects before and after go-live is covered in the guide Testing redirects.

What has changed since then?

The case study and its figures describe the years 2014 to 2018. The recommendation at the time, to create a separate Search Console property for each country directory and set the target country there, no longer applies. Google removed the “International Targeting” report, and with it country targeting, in September 2022. Google still evaluates hreflang. Google still names server location as a signal for the target audience, but not a clear one because of CDNs. According to Google, the low maintenance effort speaks for one domain with directories, while a single server location and a harder separation of versions speak against it.

Common mistakes

• Redirecting one-to-one to the new domain and only from there to the target.
• Letting old domains or their certificates expire.
• Bringing a weak domain with a lot of legacy issues into the shared domain without checking it.
• Launching a second version for the same country on a separate domain after the move.
• Forgetting hreflang, especially when the same language is used for several countries.

FAQ