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Google’s John Mueller said that simply adding country codes to your URLs won’t result in “any change at all” for regional ranking reasons. He added, changing your URLs will result in “temporary fluctuations” because of the URL change but it won’t help you in the long run with ranking well in those regions.

Instead, you should think about using ccTLDs, John added. This is because you want to have a clear and distinct separation for each country section of your site. Simply adding country codes to your URL structure is not clear and separate enough.

John was asked, “can you see any issues with using mydomain. com/shoes-es over mydomain. com/shoes/es.”

John responded on Bluesky, “I’m pretty certain you wouldn’t see any change at all (and a lot of temporary fluctuations if you were to make that change).”

He added, “It’s more about using ccTLDs vs putting the country-code in the URL. For some, having the sites clearly country-separated is important. For most, I think it doesn’t matter so much.”

Here are those questions on Bluesky:

Opening the can of worms that is international SEO

Anyone out there have any experience with URL variants?

Or @johnmu.com can you see any issues with using mydomain. com/shoes-es over mydomain. com/shoes/es

Google has a preference for the second? But a “struggling” client is set up like shoes-es

— Martin SEO McGarry (@searchassistance.co.uk) January 2, 2025 at 8:58 AM

Cool thanks… just 1 more thing! 🕵️

In this example are you guys suggesting “separation of sites” would be harder for us the owners, ie to segment or break apart if needed. Or for Google to separate the sites?

developers.google.com/search/docs/…

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— Martin SEO McGarry (@searchassistance.co.uk) January 2, 2025 at 10:43 AM

Forum discussion at Bluesky.

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