Domain won’t be pigeon-holed to just Colombia in search engine’s eyes.

     [Update: since some people asked, I successfully confirmed this with Google.]

      One of the concerns registrants of .co domain names have voiced is if Google will treat the domain as specific to Colombia instead of a generic, international domain name. This is a valid concern given that country code domain names are the top factor Google considers when figuring out who content is created for.

      According to a story at PCPro.co.uk, a popular computing site, Google has confirmed that it will allow .co to be treated as an international domain name.

      While the .co domain is still assigned to Colombia at the moment, a Google spokesperson said that would soon change. “We will rank .co domains appropriately if the content is globally targeted. Webmasters will soon have the functionality to be able to specify this by using the geotargeting options in Google Webmaster Tools.”

      This will give .co a big boost, as it was one of the most frequent arguments I’ve heard in recent weeks against registering .co domains.