31 Jan 2012
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

Til next time,
Prayag Verma at 11:39

scribble

31 Jan 2012 Blogspot domains localized and Google mum !!

31 Jan 2012
Blogspot domains localized and Google mum !!