Google Webmaster Tools Supports non-English Domain Names

Posted by steve on August 28, 2007 at 01:22 PM

Google has announced that Webmaster Tools is now allowing for the submission of non-English domains.

Up until this point, Webmaster Tools has only allowed for the registration of domain names which included letters of the English alphabet, numbers 0-9, as well as a hyphen character.

Through the new support of Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA), a mechanism which processes non-English domain names, site owners are no longer limited to submitting domain names with only English letters and numbers.

Since launching Google Sitemaps back in June 2005 (which later became known as Webmaster Tools), Google has continued to add enhancements to its suite of webmaster tools, providing site owners with progressively more information about how Google sees their site, along with the necessary info to help them diagnose potential problems.

These free tools, which have helped webmasters to make their sites more Google-friendly, have previously been extremely difficult to utilize for those with non-English domains. When adding an IDNA domain, a workaround in Webmaster Tools enabled site owners to share and receive information from Google.

This information, however, was presented in an unfavorable format, making it difficult to parse and benefit from.

With the recent support of IDNA, non-English domains will now automatically be displayed in Webmaster Tools, making it much easier for site owners to communicate with Google. This enhancement will not only be beneficial for site owners operating solely from their non-English-speaking country, but global corporations with multiple international domains will now also have the ability to dissect numerous sites and take advantage of the increasingly-useful information provided by Webmaster Tools.

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