Domain Names and Keeping it Local in Canada

When registering domain names for those businesses that are located in Canada and want to focus on their regional area or Canadian search, there are a few things you need to consider.

First you need to consider if you want a .com or a .ca domain name. Having a .ca domain name will help with showing up with Google Canada search. Now, if you happen to have a .com domain, something else you can do is have a hosting company that has its servers located in Canada. Search engines can tell where a sites are hosted based on the IP addresses with the DNS server information.

Currently with Google and Local Canada search, if you have a .com domain, and hosted in the United States, but you are a Canadian company, when you go to Google Canada and search with the option pages from Canada, most likely you're not going to show up. But, you most likely will show up for your local city/region search. There are a few tricks to fix this, but we'll leave that for a future article.

I'm assuming this is only a temporary issue with Google Canada Search and is on the list for future fixes, but for the time being you can host your site in Canada of you are already established, but if you're starting off new, consider getting a .ca domain.

Gerard Manning
Search Engine Placement Specialist
Search Engine Marketing Agency :: Manning Search Marketing