How can a site (let's call it www.sitename.ch) be ranking better on google.com (including www2 and www3) than on google.ch? I thought they all used the same index and algo, but even if they didn't the opposite would make more sense. Or am I completely wrong?
In fact, the site positions are exactly the same for all google.com and google.de. Only google.ch is different.
The Zurich data center is online, but I haven't seen any of Google's domains resolve to it yet. Nonetheless, I think it's likely a problem of different indexes at different data centers.
We obtain very different results on google.co.jp to google.com This can also have to do with the language and modules loaded by the person doing the search.