Whitey - 2:39 am on Jun 1, 2008 (gmt 0)

Just a quick backgrounder, I saw some geo filtering adjustments some time ago and reported it here :

[webmasterworld.com...]

and here :

Of much greater concern are results for "City-name" Traffic on global search on regional TLD's , probably effected by the users IP as discussed over here : [webmasterworld.com...] It's another one of those regional issues that is disruptive - so I'd take all the regional issues and put them into one pot of disruption for webmasters.

but now I'm seeing some real tough algorithimic and selective human editorial adjustments.

I suspect this is no glitch - it's a forerunner to a big attack on quality control. The rollercoaster part may just be the experiment required before a major rollout on US [ .com ] geo related sites [ my hunch ].

We have just seen one of our UK sites disappear competely in the last few days. This is a stable site of some 5 years old. But our friends in other positions have remained in the same position . So why us ?

We are concerned that stronger SEO practices used in the last few weeks, could have caused sites to be flagged for selective human review or an algo driven "trigger " . So they may have reached a tipping point. This concern is that with the use of geo filtering , "flagging" and human editorial intervention the ability for Google to QA sites has now been made more easy for G.

So things that may have been recently done, may also have pushed the boundaries of G's tolerance at a crtitical time of this new GEO related adjustment.

The BIG thing I do want to emphasise ..... and I haven't seen anyone react to it, and there should be a BIG reaction is, with GEO filtering Webmasters are not going to be easily able to see what a user is seeing in a different IP / locations so easily, making it harder to manage SEO.

I'll try to make it clearer. How do you know what result a user in New York is seeing versus a user in Stockholm on the different regions global result filter - you don't !

so how are you going to manage you regional global results deployment SEO ?

With Google's new GEO filtering tools for webmasters ?

You can't.

Google says it is introducing new tools for webmasters to help you manage it.

Where in the World is your site ? [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com]

But G's recently introduced GEO filtering management tools at Webmaster Tools are really too inadequate and premature to release ; they are too limiting to the regions you can deploy and manage in and therefore show signs of being severely disruptive to what is required to effectively manage GEO targetted results, by limiting the regions a site can be deployed in. I think this is a big G mistake.

My overall sense is that it will be some time before G gets GEO filtering right, and in the meantime there are going to be many disrupted webmasters and site owners.

My personal view is that G is about to severely mis handle the GEO location rollout adjustments i suspected that it would, and the the UK is just the experiment.

Hold onto your hats [ black and white ] everyone. This wind may run cold.

[edited by: Whitey at 2:50 am (utc) on June 1, 2008]