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How to Force Google to Use Blogspot.com URLs Instead of Country Specific URLs

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bloggerheaderIf you are frustrated by the fact that any blogspot URL redirects you to the local country version blogspot URL instead of the.com, there is a solution other than banging your head against the keyboard.

Many users have utilized the /ncr trick with Google over the years, which forces Google to use the Google.com URL when serving search results in a location where Google would normally redirect you to the country URL version of Google (for example, if Google redirects you to Google.ca or Google.co.uk, this would force Google to use Google.com instead) rather than. But what most people realizes this actually works for blogspot as well.

For example, if you wanted Google to serve you the http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/ URL instead of redirecting you to http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.ca or whichever country level domain is used for your country, in the address bar you would go to http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/ncr to force Google to always serve you (until the cookie is reset) the .com version of that particular subdomain.

The unfortunate thing is you need to use this for every individual blogspot subdomain in order to force Google to serve use the.com version. That said, it’s pretty nice that you can finally see the.com version if needed, something that Marie Haynes pointed out on Twitter that is a necessity when auditing blogspot backlinks.

Another interesting aspect of the Blogspot redirects is that if you initially follow a link to a country version of Blogspot, it will not redirect you, but will leave you on the country version you normally go to. If you follow the Blogspot link from John Mueller’s Google+ post, it will keep you on the blogspot.ch variation of the URL.

If you’ve been frustrated by the Google’s country redirect, it is good news that you can actually stop redirect from happening, even on a blog by blog basis.

Hat tip to Pedro Dias ‏ for alerting us to the workaround.

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Jennifer Slegg

Founder & Editor at The SEM Post
Jennifer Slegg is a longtime speaker and expert in search engine marketing, working in the industry for almost 20 years. When she isn't sitting at her desk writing and working, she can be found grabbing a latte at her local Starbucks or planning her next trip to Disneyland. She regularly speaks at Pubcon, SMX, State of Search, Brighton SEO and more, and has been presenting at conferences for over a decade.

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