You're reading this blog, so you may have noticed that I'm operating under mark.koli.ch; a domain hack of my name using the .ch Swiss ccTLD. The previously retired kolich.com sits idle, serving up HTTP 410 Gone's when appropriate. Interestingly enough, however, since making the switch to koli.ch I've noticed a significant drop-off of in traffic to my blog. I suspect that the switch to a non-traditional ccTLD, like .ch, is to blame. Since the switch to a dot-ch domain incoming traffic to my blog, directly from Google, has fallen off significantly. It seems that Google's ranking algorithms consider dot-com domains "more valuable" or relevant, than sites hosted under various ccTLD's. Equally annoying is that Google, and even Yahoo, fail to properly understand my koli.ch domain hack at all. In other words, when someone issues a search for "kolich blog", Google and Yahoo fail to properly interpret "koli.ch" as "kolich". Therefore, search results with "kolich" as a whole-word in the URL appear higher in the search results than others with "koli.ch". Google must understand some domain-hacks though, given that they seem to recgonize "del.icio.us" as "delicious" in their search results. I'm still wondering how to tell Google that "koli.ch" should be interpreted as "kolich", a whole word.It's funny though because I've often criticized and poked fun at folks touting various SEO (search engine optimization) techniques. My opinion has been that as long as you build a great site, with decent information on it, "they" (visitors) will come. I still live by that mantra but it's clear to me now that Google, and other search engines, really do pay careful attention to your domain. Even so, I have no plans to switch back to kolich.com, but if you are considering a switch to a domain hack like mark.koli.ch you should expect or at least be aware of the changes this move might bring to your page rank in various search results.
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