[Joerg]

Search engines and their users in Britain prefer CO.UK, in Germany they like DE and in France they love their FR. For those who don't know where they stand, a good old COM seems to do the trick.

Spreadshirt grew up under a NET and have therefore found themselves stranded in a strange land without any.. land. This has got its positives, but also its negatives. The ease at which your shops and products are found within searches (for example using Google) is limited by your potential customer's location. To try and shift the balance, we will be changing our top level domain and the link structure for the products from .NET to .CO.UK during the coming time. To make sure there are no casualties as we make this change, we've put together the following handy bits of information:

1. You can fix your country setting within your log in area. Your shop will then be reached via (for example) spreadshirt.co.uk and will be automatically optimised for the needs of search engines.

2. Old links will remain valid and visitors will be automatically forwarded to the new address.

Update 01.10.09: I've added further info down this thread: http://forum.spreadshirt.net/showpos...7&postcount=18

[mjr-productions]

Joerg

We need more info on this please.

1. If we don't make any changes in our shop Admin will we remain as a .net shop?

2. If we do make changes, how long would my existing shop URLs on .net redirect to say .co.uk (I have a lot of links into my shop from all sorts of pages on the internet)?

3. Timescales?

And finally a question about SEO. Won't Google see two identical copies of my shop on .net and .co.uk and mark it down accordingly?

[Joerg]

I have no answers yet... This will be sent out with a newsletter soon as well. In the meantime I'll try to gather your answers and let you know when I have them

[ian-b]

So, what will happen to .net? My shop isn't aimed at any specific country, and when visitors reach the Spreadshirt pages via my own domain, it suits me to have them see xxxxx.spreadshirt.net.

I really don't want visitors from Germany, France, Sweden or wherever, to see xxxxxx.spreadshirt.co.uk which is likely to discourage them, since the more generic .net domain is less likely to make them feel that they are ordering from a foreign country.

Zitat von Joerg

You can fix your country setting within your log in area.

If you mean by this the "locale" dropdown in the user data area, then I suggest that the selection "eu" should result in shops staying on the .net domain, if that's not already the intention.

[Alexander]

Some information that I have: It will be possible to have .net shops, this is actually a "per shop"-setting (shops also have a locale) and once the TLD for a shop is set opening the shop with another TLD with result in a 301-redirect, so there won't be a problem with old links or duplicate content.

[hvente]

I prefer .net... When I set up my account I was living in the UK. At the moment I live in NL. My user area will be updated every time I pack my bags.. This should not have to cause any issues with the domain. As Ian suggested their should be an option to select EU for those that want to keep .net.


grrr.. my internet is soooo slow.. only just saw that Alexander also replied;-)

[ian-b]

Zitat von Alexander

It will be possible to have .net shops, this is actually a "per shop"-setting (shops also have a locale)

So, could you clarify exactly which setting in the admin needs to be changed to ensure that a shop remains on the .net domain?

My shop is currently set to Country Code "EU" / Currency "EUR" under Shops > Settings > Language and Currency.

[Joerg]

Some answers:

-> You will be able to control the top-level-domain for each shop under "language and currency" in you shop-settings. There the locale will also determine the top-level-domain.
e.g. locale = german means .de / locale = EU means .net

-> The switch will be automatic. If you wanna keep .net change your locale to EU

-> all existing links will redirect to the new url, afaik there are no plans to make old links unfunctional at any point

-> also the urls will be made a bit simpler, the /index/index/ part dissappears for example - again, old links will be redirected

-> for the timescale, I have no definite date, but be prepared for late next week

-> the spreadshirt-platform itself will change to top-level domains later

[scotlandrocks]

Glad I spotted this, I have changed my locale to EU for now.

Then I can change it to UK if required after the changes have been made on Spreadshirts side, it will take a bit of coding on my own domain to use the .co.uk so wouldn't want it changing overnight without knowing about the exact time.

[mjr-productions]

Zitat von Joerg

Some answers:

-> also the urls will be made a bit simpler, the /index/index/ part dissappears for example - again, old links will be redirected

-> for the timescale, I have no definite date, but be prepared for late next week

-> the spreadshirt-platform itself will change to top-level domains later

1. Glad we asked, as I was set to UK/GBP and would have changed automatically making all my Google Base products invalid, as you are not allowed redirects!

2. Can you please get IT to confirm that the domain redirects are being performed as a Permanent 301 Redirect and NOT by some internal means, otherwise Google will penalise for duplicate content.

3. With the change of the URL(re: index/index) these will invalidate EVERYONE'S Google Base items (whether they change domain or not!), as you are not allowed rediredts (as previously mentioned), and Google may suspend you A/C!

4. Will the change of the URL (re: index/index) redirects also apply if you've moved domain as well. (Ie. I have a link on the web that is to .net including the index/index portion, and I've moved to co.uk)

5. There is a LOT of work for partners to do and "Late Next Week" is both short notice, and not very informative as we will need to time things very carefully!