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So, break out the champagne, right? Wrong...I talk (okay, gloat) to a colleague, and...he can't see me anywhere in the SERPS, not even the top 25, on any of the 9 datacenters! Whats up? I ask myself...I'm based in mainland Europe, my colleague is in the UK, and we're seeing different results. Not just on www.google, but across *all* dc's.
Now, the KWs I'm targetting are regional - they are in the UK. My server is in the UK. My target market is browsers from the UK. The only variable not in the UK is me! What I'm trying to understand is how the SERPS can vary so wildly - the top 25 is totally different, depending on if you check from Europe or from the UK.
So, I'm looking for as much info as possible on Google's regional results. There are three "regional" concepts - the first is whether you search on e.g. google.de, or google.com. The second is whether your actual search term contains a regional word, such as a town name. The third is whether the SERPS are affected by the searcher's physical location. I'm concentrating on the latter two interpretations.
I can understand how if you search for "shops selling green socks", then you would prefer to see results for shops local to where you are - sensible geo-targetted SERPS. What I can't figure out is why, if you search for "shops selling green socks in London", the SERPS actually vary depending on where you are searching from!
Any help, thoughts, advice, or pointers much appreciated...not to mention donations for my phone bill, which will be expensive if I have to dial up a UK ISP in order to see the UK SERPS!
In German google a PR1 .de site of mine is ranking higher than a PR5 .edu site.
but again, how would Google know this?!? Clustering sites/links by regions as well as topics...hmmm...interesting one to think through
