Caucasus · Not in the EU
SEO audit for websites in Georgia
Georgia is a small, multilingual market with its own alphabet, and generic SEO checklists mostly ignore that. If your site is aimed at people in Tbilisi, Batumi or Kutaisi, the decisions that matter are which languages to publish, how to handle Georgian letters in URLs, and whether a .ge domain or a .com with Georgian pages serves you better.
This page walks through those decisions and shows what the Nomor AI Marketing audit checks on a Georgian site. It is reference material, not a ranking promise.
Georgia at a glance
- Languages and hreflang codes
- Georgian
ka-GEOfficial language and the default for local commerce - English
en-GEVisitors, expats and international clients; not an official language - Russian
ru-GEUnderstood by many users; some businesses keep a Russian version
- Georgian
- Script
- Georgian (Mkhedruli), 33 letters. Modern everyday writing has no upper and lower case.
- Domain
- .ge is the country code. An internationalised .გე also exists.
- Native name
- საქართველო
- Currency
- Georgian lari (GEL)
- Calling code
+995- Postcode
- 4 digits
e.g. 0105 (central Tbilisi) - EU, EEA and Schengen
- Not an EU, EEA or Schengen member. EU candidate status was granted in December 2023; EU institutions have described the accession process as halted since 2024.
Market notes for Georgia
Georgian script: no capital letters, and new capitals only since 2018
Modern Georgian (Mkhedruli) does not distinguish upper and lower case in everyday writing. A capital form, Mtavruli, entered Unicode only in version 11.0 in 2018 and is used today mostly for all-caps headings or emphasis. Two practical effects follow. Do not force uppercase onto Georgian titles or headings with CSS or a CMS filter, because older fonts and some preview tools lack Mtavruli glyphs and the text can look broken. And do not rely on a 60-character title rule: scripts with wider glyphs can truncate earlier than the same number of Latin letters, so check titles by pixel width in a SERP preview.
Georgian slugs work, but Google’s URL guidance recommends percent-encoding non-ASCII characters in links, so a Georgian path becomes a long string once it is copied into a chat or an email. A common compromise is a short Latin slug in the URL with Georgian in the title, H1 and body. Either approach is fine if you choose one and keep it identical across every language version.
Three audiences: Georgian, English and Russian
Georgian is the language of local commerce. English serves visitors, expats and the foreign clients of Georgian IT and service firms. Russian is still understood by many users, so some businesses keep a Russian version. The risk is publishing all three badly: a thin machine-translated Russian site can dilute your domain, while a carefully written English version of your ten best pages often earns more than a full but stale one.
Let your own data decide. Look at the country and query-language breakdown in Search Console and at browser languages in analytics, then add a language only when you can keep it current. Mark each version with ka-GE, en-GE or ru-GE hreflang tags and keep them reciprocal: every version links to every other version and to itself, otherwise Google ignores the tags.
.ge, .გე or a .com with /ka/ folders
Google treats country-code domains such as .ge as a signal that the site is meant for that country, which makes .ge the clearest local cue for a Georgian-only brand. An internationalised domain in Georgian script, .გე, also exists, but a Latin address is easier to type, to quote in English-language press and to print.
If you serve Georgia and other markets, one .com with /ka/ and /en/ folders concentrates your links on a single domain and is simpler to maintain; hreflang then tells Google which folder is for whom. If you run both a .ge and a .com with the same content, add canonical and hreflang pairs, or the two will compete with each other.
Queries typed in Latin letters
Some users type Georgian words with Latin letters, especially in messaging, and keyboard-layout slips produce mismatched queries too. Rankings for a Georgian-script query and its Latin transliteration can differ, so test your priority terms both ways and see who appears. If competitors own the Latin version, a short, natural transliterated mention, such as the brand name written both ways, is usually enough. Do not stuff pages with transliterated keyword lists.
Copy-ready examples for Georgia
Both snippets use placeholder data. Replace the domain, name, street, phone number, coordinates and prices with your own before you publish them.
hreflang tags
This set covers 3 versions (ka-GE, en-GE, ru-GE) plus an x-default. Put the same full set in the <head> of every language version, each page listing itself too; Google ignores pairs that do not link back.
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ka-GE" href="https://example.ge/ka/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="en-GE" href="https://example.ge/en/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="ru-GE" href="https://example.ge/ru/" />
<link rel="alternate" hreflang="x-default" href="https://example.ge/en/" />LocalBusiness JSON-LD
The postcode follows the Georgia format (4 digits) and the telephone starts with +995. Use the most specific business type that fits, and keep every detail identical to your footer, contact page and map listing.
{
"@context": "https://schema.org",
"@type": "ProfessionalService",
"name": "Example Studio Tbilisi",
"url": "https://example.ge/ka/",
"image": "https://example.ge/images/storefront.jpg",
"telephone": "+995 32 000 0000",
"priceRange": "30-120 GEL",
"address": {
"@type": "PostalAddress",
"streetAddress": "1 Example Street",
"addressLocality": "Tbilisi",
"postalCode": "0105",
"addressCountry": "GE"
},
"geo": {
"@type": "GeoCoordinates",
"latitude": 41.7151,
"longitude": 44.8271
},
"openingHoursSpecification": [
{
"@type": "OpeningHoursSpecification",
"dayOfWeek": [
"Monday",
"Tuesday",
"Wednesday",
"Thursday",
"Friday"
],
"opens": "09:00",
"closes": "18:00"
}
]
}What the audit looks at
What the audit checks for Georgia
UTF-8 and encoding
Georgian text turns into unreadable characters when the encoding is declared wrongly. The audit checks the charset declaration and that titles, headings and structured data survive intact.
hreflang reciprocity and codes
We look for ka-GE, en-GE and ru-GE tags that point both ways, include a self-reference and use valid ISO codes.
Canonicals across .ge, .com and language folders
Each language version should canonicalise to itself, not to the Georgian homepage, and duplicate domains should agree on one canonical.
Organization and LocalBusiness schema
A Georgian address uses a four-digit postcode stored as text, because the leading zero in 0105 disappears if it is treated as a number. The audit validates the required properties.
Questions about SEO in Georgia
Should a Georgian business use a .ge domain?
If you sell only inside Georgia, yes: .ge is the clearest local signal. If you also serve tourists or foreign clients, a .com with /ka/ and /en/ folders, or both domains linked with hreflang and canonicals, gives you more room to grow.
Which hreflang codes do Georgian sites use?
ka-GE for Georgian, en-GE for English aimed at Georgia and ru-GE for Russian. Add x-default for a language selector. Google reads the language as an ISO 639-1 code, optionally followed by an ISO 3166-1 region.
Does Google need the lang attribute to know a page is in Georgian?
No. Google says it does not use hreflang or the HTML lang attribute to detect a page’s language and works it out from the text. Set lang=“ka” anyway, because browsers, translation tools and screen readers use it.
Is Georgia in the EU?
No. It has been an EU candidate country since December 2023, but EU institutions have described the accession process as halted since 2024. It is also outside the EEA and Schengen.
Can I use Georgian words in my URLs?
Yes, but links are percent-encoded when copied, which makes them long. Keep slugs consistent across language versions, do not mix scripts inside one slug, and check how a link looks in the messaging apps your customers use.
Need a hand with Georgia?
If your Georgia audit turns up work you would rather hand over, two teams stand behind this tool. Nomor (nomor.tech) is our software development company and Limi Creatives (limicreatives.com) is our marketing company. Send us your report and tell us which market you are working in.
Nomor
Our software development company. Nomor designs and builds the software and websites behind this tool, including the audit engine, the PDF report and the pages you are reading. It is the right place to start for custom development, performance work and technical fixes.
Limi Creatives
Our marketing company. Limi Creatives is a creative agency that runs SEO, paid ads, content, social media and video for brands. It is the right place to start when you want help turning audit findings into traffic and enquiries.