Hello,
If I was say to buy the domain www.abc.cn but my website was totally english and not chinese would this affect my search engine results? Is there a way you can tell search engines that you are english and not the language ur tld states?
Thanks,
Andy
TLDs aren't an indicator of languages. For example, .ca doesn't indicate Canadian. Country-based TLDs merely indicate the country of origin of a site...in theory.
In your scenario, you would show up on both (search engine).com and (search engine).cn results in English for the various queries related to your site. You would probably receive pretty favourable ranking in the latter based on lack of competition, too.
You wouldn't show up in Chinese results because...well...your site wouldn't be in Chinese.
Here's an example which may clear up some of the confusion for you:
The first result is gigabyte.com.tw, but the site clearly isn't Taiwanese (sorry...couldn't think of a Chinese mobo manufacturer off the top of my head. Hopefully this is close enough.)
I think it will help you if your try to target that country. but I think the sever has a lot to do with it. I would stick to TLD domain names in the future!
