Backlinking IDNs which methods work best?

[Olney]

Since each & every country has local search engines I'm wondering if any of you have done research on the best ways to backlink your IDN domains.

There is actually 4 different ways to backlink to an IDN
(If you post a URL please disable live links)

1. http://www.アニメ.com
Unicode with www

2. http://アニメ.com
Unicode without www

3. http://xn--cck5dwc.com
Punycode without www

4. http://www.xn--cck5dwc.com
Punycode with www


I was under the impression that #2 was the best until I was realizing it is taking forever for these to be indexed. It was also easier to do.

Now I started to text backlinks with #3 Punycode without www.

Has anyone done this & got better results in some language Search Engines?
I think I might have to buy some new domains for better controlled research but please share if you have some input.

[burnsinternet]

Since each & every country has local search engines I'm wondering if any of you have done research on the best ways to backlink your IDN domains.

There is actually 4 different ways to backlink to an IDN
(If you post a URL please disable live links)

1. http://www.アニメ.com
Unicode with www

2. http://アニメ.com
Unicode without www

3. http://xn--cck5dwc.com
Punycode without www

4. http://www.xn--cck5dwc.com
Punycode with www


I was under the impression that #2 was the best until I was realizing it is taking forever for these to be indexed. It was also easier to do.

Now I started to text backlinks with #3 Punycode without www.

Has anyone done this & got better results in some language Search Engines?
I think I might have to buy some new domains for better controlled research but please share if you have some input.

I have found that backlinking the punycode makes punycode show up in Google instead of the Unicode. Unless the user has the Verisign IDN plugin, that is not so helpful. Also, www seems to make no difference IMHO.

[OldIDNer]

I've been meaning to do some experimentation in this area but I've been sidetracked with other projects.

[Olney]

I have found that backlinking the punycode makes punycode show up in Google instead of the Unicode. Unless the user has the Verisign IDN plugin, that is not so helpful. Also, www seems to make no difference IMHO.



In my case in the beginning when I backlinked IDNs using punycode for Japanese domains.

Google.com would show punycode in the results for dot coms & nets
Google.co.jp always showed Unicode for me

How about other languages? Chinese, Russian, Hindi
Other search Engines? Baidu, Yandex, Yahoo, MSN?

I'll do testing for Japanese
Does anyone have perhaps 20 domains that aren't indexed in other languages that have no backlinks so we can test to see what methods work?

I think we should test 5 domains for each method.
1. One word domain
2. Two word domain
3. Highly competitive term
4. Not so competitive term
5. country extension if avalable, .org, cn, fr, jp etc.

I think we should test this...
This way we can all track to see how long it takes to get indexed & which might be the best way to backlink your IDN domains.

We might find out that some Search Engines prefer punycode, while others might like unicode.

[touchring]

Have you considered backlinking with anchor text?

For example:

<a href="http://www.xn--cck5dwc.com">アニメ.com</a>

[thefabfive]

I've always used:

<a href="http://www.アニメ.com">アニメ</a>

[Olney]

Basicly the main concern would be
<a href="http://www.xn--cck5dwc.com">アニメ.com</a>

The anchor text doesn't impact indexing
I left out the whole code but backlinking using anchor text is what I'm talking about in this post.

But which is the best way to have the link?


Have you considered backlinking with anchor text?

For example:

<a href="http://www.xn--cck5dwc.com">アニメ.com</a>

[OldIDNer]

I've asked some people at Google groups about this. Waiting to hear back. My thinking is that you would use Punycode and you would use www or not depending on where you want the PR to accumulate. I dont do any redirection and since I find most people link to me using www, I always use www.

[Olney]

That's one of my points
Japan registry uses PUNYCODE.jp with no www
There's still 2 issues with Google that they themselves haven't fixed.
Most IDNs don't have PR & we don't know why, I even posted this to Matt Cutts blog & his response was more like "We dunno"
Also any language with a character like a hyphen
The domain will show up more often with punycode.
They might have fixed that one though.
Like
ツアー.com Tour
There was a bug before that made it show up in search results as punycode because of the last character.

So Google & the likes might do some research but the results are not given to many yet.

We need to test ourselves so this info is available.

For the next year I want to make sure we get as much development info in various languages.

[OldIDNer]

I remember reading that on Matt's blog. I think he said that they may have PR it's just that you can't see it on the toolbar. Though now after some updates you should be able to if it's there. One thing I would like to know for certain is if Unicode native character urls can presently be properly spidered by G's spiders and how exactly that is handled.

I think G needs to let us know exactly how Unicode and Punycode IDN urls are indexed in the serps. Can the pr be split between them as can happen with www and non www if you have some links to the unicode version and some to the punycode version of an IDN? Can a non-ascii compatible native character Unicode IDN url be spidered and indexed consistently?

Ideally, the best way to link to an IDN would be to use the Unicode url (because that is the language) and, in my case, I would use the www.

Anyway, If I hear back regarding all this, I will post about it.

[Olney]

The PR issue is still not fixed.
I still have developed IDN domains with plenty of backlinks & no PR at all (that I can see).
I also used unicode instead of punycode & indexing wasn't that fast.

I think punycode is better but I don't want to make a generalization without research.
There are regional search engines with their own rules & hardcore facts should be created.

So for next month maybe I can collect some various domains from members to test on.
I only have Chinese & Japanese domains.


I remember reading that on Matt's blog. I think he said that they may have PR it's just that you can't see it on the toolbar. Though now after some updates you should be able to if it's there. One thing I would like to know for certain is if Unicode can presently be properly spidered by G's spiders and how exactly that is handled.

I think G needs to let us know exactly how IDNs are handled when a unicode or punycode IDN url is found by it's spiders.

[domainguru]

Linking with unicode is a bad bad idea, unless you aren't bothered about IE6 users being able to use the links ...

[touchring]

Looking at this, i just relized i've been so far behind in development. My main biz is booging me down. :(

[squirrel]

Anything new on this matter ? Is the way to go still www.puny with uni anchor text ?

[sarcle]

Anything new on this matter ? Is the way to go still www.puny (http://www.puny) with uni anchor text ?

I believe it now depends on the browser and how it reads the address. This was an issue several years ago but today not so much.

I always link puny and the browser will auto-translate.

[squirrel]

I always link puny and the browser will auto-translate.

Thanks, never thought about that

[sarcle]

Thanks, never thought about that

Not a problem. Cheers!

[domainguru]

yes, and will be for a long time.

[alpha]

yes, and will be for a long time.

you were talking to a spammer with 2 logons who was talking to himself.

[domainguru]

you were talking to a spammer with 2 logons who was talking to himself.

well its that or talk to myself .... I'll have a think about that and get back to ya :p

[buypremiumdomain]

I think <a href="http://www.xn--cck5dwc.com">アニメ.com</a> will be better for SEO. However i don't know how IDNs are handled when a unicode or punycode IDN url is found by search engines spiders. I suppose that they convert it to punycode as they use browser user agents to crawl websites like humans.