Google Is Shutting Down ccTLDs – Here’s What That Really Means for SEO, Clients, and the Future of Rank Tracking
On April 15th 2025 Google announced (in a recent blog post on Google’s official blog, “The Keyword,” – https://blog.google/products/search/country-code-top-level-domains) that it will begin redirecting users from its country-specific domains such as google.co.uk, google.com.au, and google.ca to a single global domain: google.com.
The change, aimed at “streamlining the user experience”, will be rolled out gradually over the coming months.
At first glance, this might seem like a minor technical change (Google has been providing localised results for everyone dating back to 2017). Most users won’t even notice, however for SEO this has real implications for how SEOs track and interpret organic performance – and it comes with a ripple effect across multiple layers of SEO.
In this post we’ll look at what this means for both clients and SEO agencies/consultancies – from the platforms we use, to the rising cost of reliable data, to the opportunities now opening up for bespoke rank tracking & reporting.
Doing SEO in the UK – National, Regional, and Local Campaigns
The National Layer:
If you’re running nation-wide campaigns in the United Kingdom, you’ve probably relied on google.co.uk for years to simulate what a typical user in the UK might see, regardless of where your search was coming from. That’s no longer possible.
Now, Google will redirect all ccTLDs (like google.co.uk) to google.com, and results are determined by more personalised signals such as your IP address, browser settings or your mobile device location.
What’s changed isn’t the localisation logic (as mentioned, this has been around since 2017), it’s the loss of a simple & consistent way to track a national-average view of the SERP.
Ranking for a national keyword like “Car Insurance” used to mean tracking on google.co.uk. Future rank tracking will require a much higher degree of configuration over the search environment. This means there’s going to be more setup, requiring more time, and therefore more cost to get the same output.
The Regional/Local Layer:
Tracking rankings at the city or regional level (i.e. in places like Manchester, Glasgow, or Bristol) has always required extra care. Google have never provided city-specific domains, so SEOs have long relied on country-level IPs paired with keyword modifiers (e.g. “solicitor Bristol”), to get a reasonable local snapshot.
That hasn’t changed.
In fact, compared to national tracking – which just lost the ability to simulate UK-wide results via google.co.uk – local tracking setups remain stable for now. The methods are not improved, but they also won’t be getting disrupted by Google’s ccTLD changes.
The real takeaway is this: everything now hinges on environment setup. Whether you’re tracking visibility for the entire country or for a single postcode, you’ll need to take more care with how you set up your search environment, from proxies to device settings and location simulation.
For Rank Tracking Tools – A National-Level Headache
This is bad news for SEMrush, Ahrefs, SERPstat, and other rank tracking tools. For the big players this is less of a minor shift and more of a scaling nightmare.
Here’s why:
Most rank tracking platforms still rely on direct scraping of Google, not the official API – and this ccTLD change makes that process significantly more complex at the national level.
The retirement of ccTLDs breaks one of the core shortcuts rank trackers have relied on for years: using domains like google.co.uk or google.com.au to simulate a national search environment. That fallback is now gone. All ccTLDs redirect to google.com, and location targeting must be handled entirely through technical workarounds.
Until now, running a UK ranking check for a term like “car insurance” was simple: Rank tracking tools could simply target google.co.uk and fetch results without needing to simulate location – the ccTLD did the work.
Now, that entire model collapses. To maintain national-level visibility reporting, tools must simulate a UK-based user environment for every query. That means:
- Routing traffic through UK residential or mobile IPs
- Appending encrypted uule strings or gl=uk query parameters
- Spoofing headers and user agents to avoid detection
- Navigating rate limits, captchas, and ever-changing SERP structures
And it has to happen millions of times a day – reliably, invisibly, at scale – without triggering Google’s defences.
The result? Higher infrastructure costs, greater technical fragility, and declining confidence in the precision of reported rankings.
Some platforms will quietly degrade in accuracy. Others will raise prices or restrict granularity. A few will go all-in on proxy infrastructure and pass that cost onto their users.
The tools may look the same – but underneath, they’re being forced to reinvent how national rank tracking works. And that creates both friction for users and a strategic inflection point for the providers themselves.
The Cost of Reliable Data Is Going Up
This change isn’t just technical – it’s commercial – and it’s going to hit where it hurts: cost, accuracy, and confidence in the numbers.
With the ccTLD fallback gone, tracking national-level rankings now requires every result to be simulated through a precise country-level user environment. That means rotating residential UK IPs, carefully configuring query parameters, and ensuring each search emulates a real UK-based user – all at scale.
For enterprise SEO tools, this creates real infrastructure costs – and those costs will be passed on.
This isn’t just a tax on rank tracking platforms. It’s a tax on strategic SEO.
Anyone who values data accuracy – consultants, in-house strategists, or performance-led agencies – will feel the squeeze.
The cheap, simple visibility metrics we’ve relied on are losing precision. If your work depends on benchmarking progress, validating strategy, or defending results, the cost of maintaining a reliable measurement framework is going up – whether you’re building it yourself or paying for someone else’s.
If you’re an agency or consultancy servicing national clients – or managing campaigns across multiple countries – the price of accurate, consistent rank data is going to start rising very soon.
For smaller agencies and in-house teams, it may push things past the cost-benefit threshold. When reliability drops and licence fees go up, bespoke tracking setups start to look not just better – but necessary.
For consultants? Your costs just increased.
But so did your opportunity.
The Opportunity – Back to Bespoke, but Better Than Before
Those who have been working in SEO long enough will know: we’ve been here before.
In the early days of SEO, before platforms like Searchmetrics and SEMrush became industry standards, bespoke solutions were the norm – custom dashboards, homegrown rank checkers, and reporting tools running on local servers, desktops, or even laptops.
Fast forward to 2025, and in a strange way, we’re heading back there.
Only this time, the environment has changed.
Today, the barrier to building high-quality, tailored tracking systems is lower than ever – not because of new proxies or sleeker dashboards, but because of AI.
Armed with modern LLMs, technical consultants can now design and deliver bespoke solutions at a fraction of the cost and complexity it once required.
You don’t need a full-stack development team.
You need a clear understanding of client objectives – and the ability to use AI to build lightweight, high-precision systems around what truly matters.
The opportunity is wide open: bespoke tracking solutions can now be delivered faster, with greater accuracy, and at a level of accessibility that simply wasn’t possible in 2008.
Where We Go From Here
The cost of scaling reliable national ranking data is rising – and that cost will soon be passed onto consumers.
Expect visibility data to get dirtier, more expensive, and less transparent as rank tracking platforms struggle to adapt.
For technical consultants, specialists, and boutique agencies, the opportunity is clear.
Country-level IPs and direct API access now make it possible to build high-precision, low-scale tracking setups – systems that may not scale into full-blown SaaS products, but offer better value and cleaner data than the big platforms can at national level.
While we’re building these systems, we can also:
- Track rankings at city level through rotating or mobile IP networks
- Pull click and conversion data directly into our measurement frameworks using Search Console and Analytics APIs
- Create lightweight dashboards or client-facing templates that refresh automatically
- Enhance all of it with custom, weighted visibility metrics – tuned to each client’s KPIs
AI has lowered the barrier to entry dramatically.
The cost of delivering bespoke, objective-led reporting – tuned exactly to client goals – is lower than it has ever been.
Predictive SEO models may become viable in the future – but that’s a conversation for another day.
What matters now is simple:
- The cost of scaling mass-market solutions is going up.
- The cost of building high-precision, bespoke systems is going down.
We don’t need a predictive model to see where this is headed.
If you’re operating outside the US, bespoke is back – and those who build now will hold the strategic data-edge in SEO.
Mike Simpson
With nearly 15 years of experience in SEO and digital marketing, Mike has built a reputation for driving growth and innovation. His journey began at Havas Media, where he developed expertise in client management, technical auditing, and strategic planning for top brands like Tesco Bank and Domino’s Pizza. He progressed to leading teams at Forward Internet Group and IPG Media-Brands, before taking on the role of Commercial Director & Chief Product Strategist at Barracuda Digital, where he delivered significant results for high-profile clients.
Now working as a consultant, Mike leverages his extensive experience to help businesses enhance their digital strategies, delivering bespoke solutions and measurable success. His strategic insights and dedication have made him a sought-after expert in the industry.
