John Mueller from Google clarified that appending country codes to your URLs is unlikely to bring any SEO benefits related to regional rankings. According to Mueller, making such changes will not improve your site’s visibility in specific geographic areas. Instead, altering your URLs can cause “temporary fluctuations” in rankings due to the changes themselves, but these adjustments will not lead to long-term gains for regional SEO.

Mueller emphasized the importance of using ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) if you aim to target specific countries effectively. ccTLDs provide a clear and distinct division for regional site sections, which is something that merely adding country codes to URL paths does not accomplish.

When asked whether there are issues with structures like mydomain.com/shoes-es compared to mydomain.com/shoes/es, Mueller explained that there would likely be “no noticeable difference” in ranking outcomes. However, he noted that changing URLs in this way could lead to significant but temporary ranking shifts.

“I’m fairly certain you wouldn’t observe any change in regional performance,” Mueller stated on Bluesky. “Though implementing such changes might introduce short-term volatility in rankings.”

He further elaborated, saying, “The distinction lies in utilizing ccTLDs versus including country codes in URLs. For some businesses, ensuring clear separation by country is critical. For many others, however, this level of differentiation may not be as essential.”

In summary, Google’s advice underscores the importance of thoughtful site structuring when targeting specific geographic audiences, with ccTLDs being a preferred method over simply modifying URL structures with country codes.