Andy_Langton - 6:21 pm on Apr 18, 2012 (gmt 0)

A couple of things here. I haven't checked in on it recently, but spelling variations can yield some interesting results. I've found misspellings to sometimes remove layers of filtering from SERPs, which can reveal sites that have specific problems at the ranking stage, although they may appear to have got everything right. Competitive keywords get different treatment, of course!

And I think therein lies the rub - there's something preventing you from ranking on your ideal phrase.

If I check several Google.tlds for the US spelling I am in the top 10 varying from #1 to #10. There are in excess of 10,000+ examples of this widget on my site, no other site comes within 9,000 of it! Using the UK spelling I am invariably #1 on Google.tlds and even #2 on Google.com Has anyone any idea what I could do or is this simply another example of an almost completely broken Google.com? Is anyone else seeing such a blatant foul-up?

I can appreciate that you may look at your site, compare it to competitors and come to the conclusion that it should be the top ranked result. But when it comes down to it, Google has their model of the most relevant page, and if you aren't the top ranked result, you aren't meeting their model.

That isn't about a judgement of your site in particular, but if you're aiming to optimise your ranking, then fundamentally it is about matching Google's relevance model - whether that matches your own view or otherwise.