GOOGLE WANTS THE WORLD TO SEARCH GLOBALLY

You might enter Google.co.za in your search bar, but you’ll get information from Google.com. Is it a fluke? No, it’s Google’s decision.

The tech company recently announced that it plans to start redirecting people who use its country-specific domains, such as Google.co.za, to its main portal, Google.com.

“Historically, as part of our process to provide localised results, we’ve used country code top-level domain names (ccTLD), such as google.ng for Nigeria or google.com.br for Brazil,” the company said.

In 2017, things changed when the company became able to provide local experience with local results for everyone using Search, whether they use their country’s ccTLD or Google.com.

“Because of this improvement, country-level domains are no longer necessary. So we’ll begin redirecting traffic from these ccTLDs to Google.com to streamline people’s experience on Search.”

No timeline has been given, but Google said the change will be “rolled out gradually over the coming months”.

It did warn that usthe er may be prompted to “re-enter some of (their) Search preferences in the process”.

In the statement, Google assured that it won’t change how it handles its data under national laws like South Africa’s POPIA and Europe’s GDPR.

Image credit: Search Engine Roundtable