Geotargeting Settings

Geotargeting Settings are the controls that tell a search engine which country a site or section is meant to serve, most directly through the international targeting option in Google Search Console.

When your domain sends no country signal of its own, you can declare one manually. In Google Search Console, the country targeting setting lets you associate a property with a specific country. This is most relevant for sites on a generic top-level domain like .com that use subdirectories or subdomains, where the URL alone does not indicate a target market.

A key rule governs when this setting applies. Sites on a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) such as .fr or .de are already locked to that country, so the manual country setting is unavailable and unnecessary for them. Generic top-level domains, by contrast, can be targeted to a country you choose. To target different countries for different sections, you add each subdirectory or subdomain as its own property and set the country per property.

Geotargeting settings only address country, not language. Language targeting is handled separately through hreflang annotations and the content itself. So a complete setup often combines both: hreflang to say which language and regional version a page is for, and the Search Console country setting to reinforce the country for a generic-domain section. Note that this control targets a country, so it suits region-focused sites; a site aiming at a language across many countries leans on hreflang instead. Use geotargeting only when you genuinely want a section tied to one country, since the setting will constrain how that content surfaces in other markets.

Related: Language Targeting, ccTLD, gTLD, Hreflang and International SEO guide