The Manchester SEO Blog recently revealed that .gb.com domains face extreme penalties in Google, with revelations that sparked a storm of controversy in Google Webmasters forum. I am very pleased to present to everyone today evidence that confirms gb.com domains are penalised in Google.
I didn’t intend to take things quite this far, but my hand was forced by gaggle of nay-sayers who didn’t accept there was problem. My friend and I realised that overwhelming empirical evidence was the only route to go.
Proving gb.com Domains are Penalized in Google
We began by compiling a list of 35 .gb.com, .uk.com and .co.uk domains, which were chosen by Google. In each case we did: site:*.gb.com, site:*.uk.com and site:*.co.uk into the Google Search bar to populate our list of URLs. It is our hope that any bias Google has for the order in which domains are returned using this command, will be applied to all tests and can therefore be eliminated as a variable. We also used a random selection of 16 additional hand picked domains for each type of domain from DMOZ.
We chose uk.com domains as these closely resemble gb.com domains in structure and would act as the control, as we suspected uk.com domains were not penalized in Google. We also included .co.uk domains as a comparison that would highlight any other issues of the apparent sub-domain structure of the former two types of domains.
For each domain in turn we did a Google search for:
- The Domain Name
- The Entire <title> Element
- The Company Name
- The Entire META Description
gb.com Domain Penalization Results
The results were astounding – it rapidly became apparent that .uk.com domains had a similar ranking behaviour to .co.uk domains. .gb.com domains on the other hand were usually several pages behind – often ranking on page three, four or five for their own company name or entire title tag. The .co.uk and .uk.com domains however, were usually found on page 1 in most cases.
The entire gb.com domain penalization test Excel Spreadsheet here.
co.uk Domain Ranking Results
uk.com Domain Ranking Results
gb.com Domain Ranking Results
What do these results mean? Well, despite all the opposition who were reluctant to accept there was a problem, clearly gb.com domains do face a penalty in Google. Does this stop you from ranking? No, but there are very few that appear to have high ranking gb.com domains, and the sensible SEO advice would be to avoid these where possible and view this blog entry to find out how to fix it!
Tags: domains, gb.com, Google, manchester seo, manchester seo blog, penalized
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That’s really surprising for gb.com domains getting penalized…
I really can’t see any reasons why this should be except to conclude that it’s an algo flaw. If it gets well enough known, I would assume it’ll be picked up by Google and some attention will be paid to fixing it. As I said in an earlier post, I do have uk.coms and they’re doing ok but I’ll certainly bear this in mind if I get asked to work with any gb.coms.
BB
This makes very interesting reading. I have been banging my head against a brick wall over one client website that does not appear anywhere on google for their company name! Every website we have ever built has appeared in the top 3 for the company name except this one……and guess what…… it’s also the only .gb.com domain we have. Coincidence? I think not. Thanks guys, I think you’re on to something here.
As way of an update, I have relaunched our clients website under a .co.uk rather than the gb.com. The site is http://www.westbourne-construction.co.uk and once indexed we will be monitoring their performance for the keyword Westbourne. I will let you know if it makes a difference.
That’s fantastic Paul, thank you for the update! I can see you have the 301 redirect from the gb.com in place and everything looks perfect. I’m 99% sure this will instantly fix the ranking problem as soon as Google next indexes the gb.com domain. It would be great for you to be able to independently confim that the 301 redirect workaround fixes this weird issue.
There were so many variables that affect ranking which made it difficult for us to cook up a ‘fair’ test that would highlight the problem with the domain itself. Both you and I know that only the domain name has changed, so any sudden changes in ranking behaviour can only be attributed to the domain itself!
Thanks again for the update! I will be keeping a close watch but please feel free to post further updates!