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The SERPS that you see might not be the SERPS that the rest of the world sees.
What?
We all know that users from different countries get presented with a different Google homepage, normally in their language. There's been some glitches, though, which i attribute to Google using IP lookups. Anyway...
Here's the news: A few tests with changing the language setting of my browser reveals that the SERPS do change, depending on the browser language.
I've only tested a little, but it seems to me that the effect is, that sites from the TLD that corresponds to the language chosen in the browser is given higher weight (ranking) in the SERPS.
I'm not sure if the weight is "TLD of site" or "TLD of inbounds" or both, as, in one specific case with very low competition, a two keyword link (yes one) from a PR5 page on the local TLD made a specific other local TLD site rise from #3 to #1 position for those two kw's (yes, i know that link did it, there's no other way to connect that site with those two words; they are nowhere. I own it.). Other top positions changed quite a bit as well.
This is especially interesting for people serving multiple-language markets (regardless of the language of your site).
How?
Try it: In Firefox, go to "tools" > "options" > "general" > "languages". Add another language and move it to the top of the list. Then search Google. Change language and repeat. IE and Opera has a similar option somewhere.
The cloaking technique Google is using here, is quite simple. Whenever a request comes in from a browser, the "HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGES" header is sent with the request - from your browser to Google. As the language preference is received, customized output is delivered.
Why?
To make SERPS better, as always, i think. Local sites, ie. sites in the relevant language, are ranked higher. In general, it seems to give good SERPS, ie. relevant ones, but in some cases the most relevant ones will be degraded because of language.
