Google’s Geographical Changes & Affiliate Marketing

Google has launched a nifty new feature that allows you to set a Geographic target to help you focus your website on a particular area & region anywhere in the world.

It’s accessible from within Webmaster Tools under the Tools / Set Geographic Target.

So what does this mean for Affiliate Marketers?

Well, the first thing that comes to mind is we can now build huge niche sites & specifically target certain subdomains to different regions & countries.

This pretty much ties in well with my last Local Directory post, I mentioned that once your site was up & running you could then branch out into different cities within Australia:

• melbourne.yoursite.com.au
• sydney.yoursite.com.au
• perth.yoursite.com.au
• adelaide.yoursite.com.au
• brisbane.yoursite.com.au

Each subdomain can have it’s own Webmaster Tools Account, so in theory you are able to set the region for each of your subdomains separately. Giving each subdomain more exposure in the areas you want it to been seen in.

What are the Benefits?

The main benefit is that you can now target the Australian market without strictly buying a .com.au or target the UK market without buying a .co.uk domain name. Simply by setting the targeting in Webmaster Tools.

What are the Drawbacks?

It’s still too early to tell how setting this option will effect overall traffic. If you run a local site that doesn’t need any international traffic you may see a boost in Local Rankings, which in turn could mean more profits. However, if you run a site that relies on International Traffic, then setting a locality may affect you negatively.

Naturally you still also have to be careful of duplicate content, just because you can target a site to different areas doesn’t mean you can just duplicate the existing content onto a subdomain then set the targetings. I bet that was one of the first things that popped into your head!

What affiliate marketing applications can you think of that would benefit from this feature?