Google now treats .ai domains as generic top-level domains
That means that Google won't default .ai domains as being geo-specific to Anguilla.
Google has updated its help documentation to specify that Google Search now considers .ai domain names as a generic top-level domain, such as a .com, .org and others. Google posted the update over here, by adding .ai to the list of ccTLDs that Google treats as gTLDs.
What it means. This just means that if you are using a .ai domain for your website, Google will no longer consider that domain to be geo-related to Anguilla. Anguilla, a British Overseas Territory in the Eastern Caribbean, comprises a small main island and several offshore islets.
Gary Illyes from the Google search relations team posted on LinkedIn saying, “we won’t infer the target country from the ccTLD so targeting Anguilla became a little harder, but then again there are barely any .ai domains that try to do that anyway.”
Why we care. If you were avoiding using a .ai domain name because you were concerned Google might target it to Anguilla, then you no longer need to worry about that. Go ahead, build your next business under a .ai domain.
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In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.
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