Progressive increase in regional search usage?

Are users getting better at searching Google?

[Macguru]

Hi,

6 months ago my stats revealed about 12 % of Google queries beeing made with regional filters. It showed a progressive increase to 17 % now.

Since I added some sites to the ones sampled. Those numbers are probably not a good sampling. It would be complicated for me, at this time, to remove the new sites datas from the samples analised.

Can we compare the figures?

Any global statistics available somewhere?

[lazerzubb]

I know they push their local versions very hard, i know i've read numbers somewhere (trying to find it).
In the mean time i found this.
google.blogspace.com/archives/000719

Which helps out a little bit.

[vitaplease]

12 % of Google queries beeing made with regional filters

Do you mean the: "only show results from France": type?

or just the Google.fr and Google.de - any search type?

[Macguru]

Do you mean the: "only show results from France": type?

Yes. They show a special cr=country string in URL. I guess "cr" means country restiction or something.

www.google.ca/search?q=fuzzy+blue+gizmos&hl=en&lr=lang_fr&cr=countryCA&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&start=10&sa=N

They get it from IP lookups. Interesting recent thread about it here :
[webmasterworld.com...]

[vitaplease]

The 11% mentioned here for France is the only data I've seen in a general way.

[webmasterworld.com...]

With Google and Yahoogle giving me 90% plus of search engine referals, that 11% is equal to missing out on all the other search engine referrals (MSN, Lycos, AV etc). If I look at it that way its dramatic.

On the other hand people really looking so locally would probably never have the outlook to even think of buying internationally.