GOOGLE HAS KILLED off its longstanding Irish domain.

Over the past couple of weeks, more and more Irish users have been redirected from Google.ie to Google.com.

Google says the change, which it is rolling out gradually over a number of months, won’t make any difference to how its search works.

Google.ie is now plain old Google.com. Google Google

It’s part of a wider move by the company, announced late last month, to get rid of country-level domains globally. 

Google said in a statement announcing the scrapping of its country-level domains that users may be prompted to re-enter some search preferences during the move to Google.com.

Starting in 2017, Google users have received locally targeted results regardless of whether they are using their country domain or Google.com. 

Google said: “Because of this improvement, country-level domains are no longer necessary.”

The company says the change won’t make any difference to how it deals with its obligations under national laws.

There’s good news for Gaeilgeoirí, as the option to search in Irish from the Google search home page is still available if you navigate to Google.com from an Irish location (or are redirected there from Google.ie).

Although Google claims there is no change to user experience, Aoife McIlraith, managing director of Luminosity Digital marketing agency, said that since an algorithm update two years ago, Irish Google users have been getting more British websites, with .co.uk domains, in their search results.

“That’s always been there, but it’s even worse now,” McIlraith said.