Gary Illyes from Google said in the latest Google SEO office hours that using a ccTLD and the localized language on your page and website does help you rank a little better in the localized/regional version of Google. So if you want to rank better in Google in Korea, using a ccTLd such as .kr helps a little and using Korean text on your page helps even more.
This came up at the 3:35 mark in the video.
Question: When a Korean person searches Google in Korean, does a com.kr domain or a .com domain do better?
Answer: Good question. Generally speaking the local domain names, in your case .kr tend to do better because Google Search promotes content local to the user. That’s not to say that a .com domain can’t do well, it can, but generally .kr has a little more benefit, albeit not too much. If the language of a site matches the user’s query language, that probably has more impact than the domain name itself. There’s more on managing international websites.
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