In a major shift for its search experience, Google has started redirecting all of its country-specific domains (such as google.co.uk or google.fr) to a unified global domain, google.com. This move marks a significant change in how users access localized content—but it doesn’t mean Google is stepping away from region-specific results.
Location Over Domain: How Google Will Serve Local Results
Even though all traffic will now route through google.com, users will still see localized results based on their physical location. This means someone in France will continue to see French search results, even if they’re visiting google.com instead of google.fr.
Google has made it clear that the functionality and purpose of Search won’t change. The company will still comply with local regulations and show results tailored to the user’s country or language preferences.
Hreflang Still Matters—for Now
While the domain change itself won’t affect how international SEO is managed today, it has sparked conversation among digital marketers and SEO experts—especially around the future of hreflang tags, which are used to indicate language and regional variations of web pages.
The current consensus is that hreflang remains essential. It’s still the best method to signal to Google which version of your content should appear to users in different countries or languages. However, the shift toward a unified domain structure may be a step toward Google relying more on automated language detection and less on manual tagging in the future.
Google’s Vision: Smarter Localization Through Automation
There is growing speculation that Google may eventually favor AI-based language recognition over traditional signals like hreflang. As AI continues to evolve, it’s likely that Google will become better at understanding and serving the right content to the right users without needing webmasters to explicitly define every variation.
Still, that day hasn’t arrived yet. For now, SEO professionals are advised to maintain their current practices, including the correct implementation of hreflang tags, accurate language markup, and localized page content.
What Should SEO Professionals Do Next?
With this change rolling out, it’s a good time to review your international SEO setup. Here’s what digital marketers and webmasters should keep in mind:
- Double-check your hreflang implementations to ensure accuracy across regional versions of your site.
- Monitor web analytics closely to see if the domain redirection impacts traffic sources or user behavior.
- Don’t dismantle your regional strategies just because Google is centralizing its domains. Businesses still benefit from targeting audiences with localized content and language-specific pages.
- Make sure your content clearly communicates its target region or language to support both users and search engines.
Final Thoughts
Google’s move to consolidate its domains reflects a growing focus on simplicity and smarter automation. Although this change doesn’t disrupt current SEO best practices, it signals that the future of global search may rely more on real-time understanding of users rather than technical signals alone.
For now, hreflang and localized SEO strategies remain highly relevant—but it’s wise to stay flexible and keep an eye on future developments in how Google interprets multilingual and multinational content.