Google and UK Blog Search Results
Posted by Mark White, Blog Consultant in Blog Directories and Search , Blogging for Small Businesses , Business Blogging FAQs , Corporate Blogging , SEO in Blogs
Getting your blog indexed by Search Engines is relatively easy – you write, get linked to and the Search Engines follow the links and find you. Et voila! However, for most bloggers, ranking highly is more important and doing so on Google in particular for some it’s for bragging rights (egosurfing and the like) but, for business bloggers, it is for commercial reasons. Lets be honest, getting found means more potential readers and so more potential customers.
However, although we tend to use Google in the singular, there are many different Google search results for the same phrase, the primary factor being where you are searching from.
We know that Google operates Google.com as the global search engine and then a large number of individual country search engines, the UK one, for example, sitting at www.google.co.uk. The results at Google.com and Google.co.uk vary quite markedly with more relevance given to sites which are country specific in the google.co.uk results. There is also a third option which I am primarily interested in here, which is for “pages from the UK” only, and is activated by a click box as you can see below.
To be included in this listing, Google needs to ascertain where a blog writer is located so that they can decide whether they should appear in these results or not. This they have generally done either using the country suffix on the domain so for UK results, .uk as in .co.uk or .org.uk – or where the IP of the host server indicates they are based. Result – if you are a UK blogger with a.com domain and host it in the US then there is no way of Google to know that you are UK based and so you are excluded in a uk only search.
With me so far? Good. (Oh and by the way, this is the same for all other countries, US expected)
However, rather than suddenly reach for the UK Hosting Directory, Google it seems has now offered a solution to ensure inclusion, by allowing us to associate our sites (and blogs) to a particular country, no matter what domain name or hosting we have.
As outlined in Better Geographic choices for webmasters:
Starting today Google Webmaster Tools helps you better control the country association of your content on a per-domain, per-subdomain, or per-directory level. The information you give us will help us determine how your site appears in our country-specific search results …
So, pop along to Google Webmaster Tools and get yourself associated with the country you are targetting – you can only do so with one at the moment so don’t try to be greedy, but it’s probably worthwhile and certainly if you are not appearing where you would like in your country specific results.
November 7th, 2007 at 6:02 pm
Probably worth mentioning that each of Google’s TLD domains may actually be split into several data centres and these are not necessarily synchronised. There are potentially significant differences depending on which DC Google serves to your ISP (or DNS server).
It can be quite embarassing to brag about getting a client nice and high in Google only to discover that said client is looking at a different DC with a whole different set of SERPs.
db
November 8th, 2007 at 12:37 am
Thanks for that David. Yes, of course the different data centres do cause some interesting “effects” as well though it’s sometimes difficult to know where to pin the blame. In fact, for the last week I had disappeared in SERPS for “Blog Consultant” but lo and behold back on page 1 today – could be DC issues or something else … I guess we’ll never know. Thanks again for the addition.
November 8th, 2007 at 3:45 am
Hello Mark – Thanks for the great article. You know, I don’t believe that the majority of BlogMasters, and WebMasters too realize just how “segregated” their sites are in Google search. I mean, a site like your own with good information certainly for English speaking bloggers, and probably bloggers in other countries who may translate your posts, should come up in many locations—yes? This is a “World” Wide Web, so Google’s decision to list only in one geographic search result seems arbitrary at best. And, much more should be done on the subject of getting listed globally. I’d like to post an article on it at WebHelperMagazine.com… maybe we can team up on it.
Yours, Scott
Scott Frangos, Managing Editor
WebHelperMagazine.com
November 9th, 2007 at 12:26 am
Scott, thanks for your comment. With regard to listing in only one country, I can see it from Google’s perspective. Although the WWW is global, a lot of people when they search for goods and services (rather than purely information) are looking for something local – so if Google’s aim is to give its users the most relevant results then I guess they need to be giving local companies priority which is what happens.
However, as you rightly point out, there are also a lot of us who, like yourself, work in a global economy and would like to approach it as such. So hopefully Google will develop their geographic targeting over time and we can start to get a better way of being listed globally.
Would be very happy to teamup on an article on this and will drop you a line. All the best.