You wouldn’t be surprised in future if you visit Blogspot.com other than in US country you’ll be redirected to your country specific URL in browser in fact its happening now – where Google redirecting Indian users from blogspot.com domain to blogspot.in. For e.g if you visit Googleblog.blogspot.com URL from India you’ll be taken to Googleblog.blogspot.in URL.
Why Blogspot.com blogs redirected to blogspot.in?
Blogger’s help page confirms this.
If you’re reading a blogspot.com blog in Australia blogspot servers detects your IP address and redirects you to country-code top level domain or ccTLD if supported in your country here you’ll be redirected to blogspot.au.
Blogspot owners shouldn’t see any visible changes except URL redirection to ccTLD. URLs of Custom domains won’t be affected with this change.
Visiting affected blogs without redirection
Blog readers can still see country specific version of blogspot content by entering specially formatted “ NCR” URL. This is like visiting Google.com/ncr in your browser. NCR stands for No Country direct, you should then use for e.g http://[blogname] blogspot.com/ncr to go to the U.S English blog.
Why Google is doing this?
“Migrating to localized domains will allow us to continue promoting free expression and responsible publishing while providing greater flexibility in complying with valid removal requests pursuant to local law. By utilizing ccTLDs, content removals can be managed on a per country basis, which will limit their impact to the smallest number of readers. Content removed due to a specific country’s law will only be removed from the relevant ccTLD. “
How does ccTLDs affect SEO of blogspot blogs?
You don’t have to worry about SEO of your blog as Google specifies the blogspot.com version as the canonical version using ‘rel=Canonical”
In coming months you’ll see ccTLDs in additional countries.
