Google.de vs. Google.com

different algo's

[Adam_C]

Can anyone explain to me the difference between google.com and google.de in the way they rank sites.

I've got a nice top ten position in the .com for a German site on a keyword similar to widgets deutschland

However, in google.de the site doesn't appear until the third page on the same term on each of the "Das Web", "Seiten auf deutsch" and "Seiten aus Deutschland" options.

I would have thought that, if anything, this site (which is in German, and on a .de domain) would rank higher in google.de that .com, not the reverse.

Any insight much appreciated, as always

[heini]

Adam, how does your competition fare, and how do the top ten in each compare? Do you see any pattern there?

[Adam_C]

its fairly mixed - hard to determine a pattern

Will post up again if i find anything

[Sinner_G]

same term

Do you also enter 'widget deutschland' on google.de? If not, that might make a difference.

[heini]

One thing to consider:
I open 3 browsers simultaneously, Opera, Netscape, IE, connect to G.de, key in the same search term - get three different serps.

[Sinner_G]

heini, can you give us an (non committing) example? I get the same results with IE/Opera.

[Adam_C]

Sinner_G: am putting widgetS ... into both

heini: why should the browser differences be relevant? I am using just IE to check these. Very strange.

My experience is primarily with gg.com and .co.uk.

On .co.uk, usually "UK sites only" is a direct subsection of the main web results, whilst the default search is identicle to .com

[heini]

>same results
Most of the time I get the same set too, but not always. The point is: It's getting increasingly difficult to tell what the *true* serps are.
A little experiment is to just change the interface language settings. In a string:
www.google.de/search?q=google&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=de&btnG=Google+Suche
you just change the hl=de part to hl=en.

[Sinner_G]

interface language

So are your browsers all the same language? I have IE in German, but Opera in English.

[heini]

>same language
Whatever your browser language is set to, you can easily manipulate the value of that param by manually changing it in the string displayed in the url field.

[martinibuster]

Could Google possibly alter your results by ip?

[Adam_C]

Language isn't effecting the SERP's I'm looking at.