May 23, 2007
I met with 2 different clients this morning and had more or less the same discussion about all the different flavors of Google regional search results out there.The client wants to know where they are ranking for the phrases they are watching - a reasonable request.
So I'm sitting down with the client explaining the rankings for a fairly competitive phrase we are targeting. We have 2 sites, one each for New Zealand and India.
On google.co.nz, 'pages from New Zealand', we are number 1.
On google.co.nz, 'the web', we are number 5 or so.
On google.co.in, 'pages from India', we are number 1.
On google.co.in, 'the web', we aren't anywhere significant.
On google.com, we aren't anywhere significant for either site.
But it gets more complicated
So these results are all well and good, but they are skewed because we are viewing Google from a New Zealand IP address. Search results on google.com are quite different when you view from the USA or any other country. We were finding that being #1 on google.com for a particular phrase was bringing in very little traffic, until we realized that our #1 from a NZ IP address was actually #18 from a US IP address. Big difference.Because airfares are not all that cheap, I use a proxy to view search results from an American perspective - www.proxy.org has a good list of free proxies.
10 per page or 100 per page
So while my client was looking through the multiple pages of results, he got bored of clicking and turned the google.co.in results to 100 per page. All of a sudden, our number 1 result turned into a number 3 result.The 100 per page results differ from the 10 per page in that there are more indented results, but I have not seen the order of the results shift around before. It could be that the site beating me had better sub-pages than mine, or more depth of content to better match the phrase. Or just some random Google dance.
And more...
You can also go to google.com and mangle the URL with some variables to make it country specific. I have ranked #1 for the phrase "seo" for some time by applying a NZ filter to google.com results.However, if you try that exact same query but replace the .com with .co.nz I find myself on page 3 of the results. It's not that I'm not capable of getting higher, as I manage 2 other newer and less powerful sites in the top 10 for this same search.
I wonder if it's the .com domain working against me? Maybe it's not enough to be hosted in New Zealand - maybe I need the .nz domain name as well?
Something to think about
I haven't even mentioned personalization of results (that's another story), but it's clear that there are too many different flavors of Google results to keep track of properly.My approach is to educate the client on the different types of search, so they understand why the site shows up where it does.
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Comments
Lynn Bishop - Jun 8, 2007
Hi, I have noticed this many times,
have a look at this programme you can get it for a free trial for 30 days, it tells you where you are ranked in google global and and many local googles, as well as yahoo msn and maybe a couple of other search engines, personally I think the programme is a bit to pricey for the pro lifetime version, but it's still interesting http://www.cleverstat.com/search-engines.htm
If you cruise that site, they have a free program that just checks google.com(well at least one of googles data-centers) which although can be hinky is a pretty good and interesting.
Cheers Lynn
Chris Giddings - Aug 22, 2007
Not too long ago my employer and I started looking into developing localized versions of our website. While in this process we posed the question to Bruce Clay who responded by saying that hosting within the target locality is only one step in the process. It's really preferred by Google and the other SEs to use a localized domain (ragepank.co.nz) versus a near borderless domain (.com, .net) which doesn't tell the SEs whether you're just hosted in the locality or whether you're actually targeting the locality.
Long story short, localized domains work best when looking to tackle a specific locality (New Zealand). If you're more global or expansive in scope holding onto your .com domain which you already have great results and vested interest is probably best.
Also indicated by Bruce Clay was his opinion that if your site is hosted with multiple English speaking localized domains (.co.nz, .co.uk, .com, .co.in) that Google won't penalize for duplicated content (that's not to say you shouldn't localize the content for the market and more localized results).
Michael Kingsley - Sep 14, 2007
An interesting idea/question.
Does Google results differ from different parts of the country and, is there a way to check that out through a software program or using proxies.
I.E.:
I would like to use a search term, such as "Fromm Dog Food" and search it on Google in specific areas:
1. Florida
2. New York
3. Minneapolis
4. Colorado
5. California
Do you or anyone else think this is possible and do you think results are different based on the area of the country you are in.
Just food for thought.
Thanks,
Michael
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Jim - May 25, 2007
A great observation !
I've often been in situations where I have to explain Google's inconsistencies to my clients.