Blogspot.com is Redirecting to Country Specific URL

Now onwards Blogger blogs will redirect to country level TLD extension. Usually I read Google webmaster central blog, Google blog to know about latest updates from Google. But On i.e. Jan 31st 2012, I observed that the blog of Googlewebmastercentral "Blogspot.com is automatically redirecting to Blogspot.in" of Google. Then I checked my blog as I live in India, it's redirecting to ".in". It might redirect to “blogspot.com.au”, if I live in Australia.

Key Points regarding this change:

1. Duplicate content issue is the 1st thing we notice in this case. However Google is stating that "rel=canonical" tag will be used across all country level extensions and their team is trying to make less negative impact on search results.

2. Google will receive so many requests to remove content from few blogs. So they would like to manage country wise removal of content. Few countries may not accept some content, but other countries will. Through this latest update, Content removed as per a country’s law will only be removed from the relevant ccTLD and available for other countries.

3. Custom domains will not see any affect. Free blogspot sites will just redirect to country wise extension, remaining all same.

Here is the official information from Google regarding this change: http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2402711