Chris_D - 9:56 am on Aug 18, 2004 (gmt 0)

Would that account for .com Japanese sites that are hosted offshore, without DMOZ listings being listed in Google?

Bill - do you mean that a .com site, with no DMOZ regional listing for Japan, hosted outside of Japan, appears for a search in Google.co.jp when you select the radio button 'pages from Japan'?

If so - humour me - and check the nameserver hosting as well as the website hosting. There are two aspects to hosting - the website itself, and the nameservers. You can have the site hosted in e.g. America - but the nameservers in e.g. Japan. That's exactly what I'd do if I was a Japanese hosting provider.......

Most of my experience is with english language sites - but potentially Google may also check character encoding. So maybe a kanjii site is automatically included as a 'Japanese site' - I don't know.