What are the inclusion criteria for Google Australia?

[rickagain]

Split from [webmasterworld.com...]

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Hi Dodger

I have a number of Australian sites - I too have noticed some down (some up too).

My initial research is that more and more Aussie Google users seem to be searching for 'Pages from Australia'... as I have some sites hosted outside Australia that don't appear in this type of search that have had a drop (or less than expected growth) in November.

I actually came to these boards to see what I could find out.

Can you reply as to if your sites are hosted in or out of Australia and if you use ".au" domains.

Cheers
Rick

[edited by: Woz at 7:57 am (utc) on Dec. 17, 2004]
[edit reason] Mod Note [/edit]

[dodger]

Rick,
My site has a .au domain and is hosted in AU. I was wondering if business has wound down early this year (mine is a business site) as the decline has been quite noticable lately.

[rickagain]

I've dug a bit deeper and revised my theory to include the take up of CPC in Australia... which would take away from organic traffic. (remembering that I cut back on CPC as it was getting our of hand).

Also - what kind of decline are we talking about? -all my sites this year compared to same time last year are getting about the same traffic (some down 10% some up 10%)... I would have expected all sites to be up.

Also - I did notice June / Jul / Aug were up a good 20% on same periods last year across all my sites... so maybe things are slowing down earlier.

[dcristo]

My initial research is that more and more Aussie Google users seem to be searching for 'Pages from Australia'... as I have some sites hosted outside Australia that don't appear in this type of search that have had a drop (or less than expected growth) in November.

Id be interested to hear your thoughts regarding how your .au domain/aus hosted sites rank in google.com?

I'm optimising a .au domain/aus hosted site which Im seeing good results in google.com.au - however Im nowhere to be seen on google.com

[rickagain]

I'm nowhere near as technical as anallawalla with servers - and of my 'well established' sites, just one is a 'dot au' and none are hosted in Australia.

That one 'dot au' does well in both big google and pages from australia.

I have newer sites that are hosted in australia, some are ranking well - some only rank for detailed phrases.

I should add that I looked closely at all my stats - this Novembers traffic is up 20% on last November (just counting the sites that were around last Nov). But like I said - some are up and some are down.

I never thought I could loose ranking by moving servers to another country.

I thought it would be easier to rank in 'pages from australia' as all competing pages hosted outside australia or without the AU domain - don't appear in the SERPs.

I've been keeping an eye on this issue over the years;

Some SE's have used Australian sites only as the default (AV, Excite) - but fortunately for me didn't keep it up for long.

Also, till recently, high bandwidth Austalian hosting was EXPENSIVE - the national telco charges $185 per GB (I got a quote about a year ago from them and they don't offer any discounting for high usage - I think I said I needed up to 50GB per month, they quoted the full $185 per GB)!

I notice Yahoo AU with 'AU only' selected is happy with my 'dot com' hosted outside Australia.

But - if my theory of users activily selecting 'pages from australia' on Google is true - I'm missing out on traffic.

I have also found some reasonably priced bandwidth in Australia.

So -for me, if I cannot find a down side... I'll look to move my popular sites to Australian servers early next year.

I'm a bit all over with this post - but just one more thing...

Is it a fact that Australian hosting of a 'dot com' will result in being displayed in SERPs 'pages from australia'?

[Chris_D]

Hey Rickagain, its my understanding that the 3 'clues' Google looks at to determine the 'best' geographic 'base' for a site are the DMOZ regional listings, the server IP of the nameserver (not the webserver), and the domain extension.

I have a .com site with an Australian nameserver and a regional Australian listing in DMOZ - and it shows up fine for Australian searches.

Hey Woz - remember who told us that Google used the DMOZ listing? :)

[Woz]

Yep, you keep reminding me. ;)

Onya
Woz

[rickagain]

So - I have .com - plus Aussie DMOZ listing - hosted in USA... all I need now is an Aussie nameserver (keeping the host in USA) and I should appear in the 'pages from australia' index?

I'm not too technical - how / where do I get an Aussie nameserver?

Also - I did call Google Australia some time ago (they only sell ad space) and asked about this. They told me a DMOZ listing in an Australian category would be enough... when I told them I had one... they said they didn't know anymore about it and suggested I email Google.

[Woz]

rickagain, one of the three clues should be enough to get you tagged as an Aussue site. As you have the Aussie DMOZ listing you "should" be OK. If you still don't get any joy then, as suggested, an email to Google might be your next step.

Onya
Woz

[fish_eye]

Rick, How long has your DMOZ listing been active?

All, does having listings in 'respectable' AU directores help (ie. ones where an ABN is required)?

BTW I have noticed an increase over the last week or so (have not looked closely at November). I have a few unrelated sub-domains on a .com on AU hosting etc etc but none of them are really business related. My heaviest traffic site is definitely predominanantly Mon-Fri and I suspect a lot of tertiary students stumble across it.

PS. On the strength of my Google Page impressions I am seeing 39% increase in the first 8 days of Dec over the Nov average. Admittedly some pages have more than 1 ad set so that makes it a bit hit and miss as far as a statistic is concerned - nice quick "finger in the air" check though.

[rickagain]

Fish_eye

DMOZ listing for a long time. can't remember when DMOZ started, think it started as NewYoo [or something]... I was in since then.

What respected aussie directories are you talking about?

I did notice a yahoo.com.au search for "AU only" - includes this site within the results... Yahoo has it in an Australian related category in its directory.

[fish_eye]

I was about to say that I only really know about one, and was going to sticky you the URL .... but then I did a bit of research and perhaps it's not as respected as I thought (or as respectable).

Y! directory was going to be my other suggestion - but you're in there already so that's about it I'm afraid.

I guess you've answered your own question:

... all I need now is an Aussie nameserver (keeping the host in USA) and I should appear in the 'pages from australia' index?

[rickagain]

I just got an answer from Google bout the country specific searches;

<snip>

Hope this helps a few other people.

[edited by: bill at 9:13 am (utc) on Dec. 16, 2004]
[edit reason] no e-mail quotes please - TOS #9 [/edit]

[dodger]

Very interesting rickagain thanks for sharing.
So it's not the domain extension that matters, it's where the site is hosted.

[Chris_D]

Hey Rickagain,

You can't quote email correspondence - but I understand you can give us a summary in your own words....

So what did they tell you?

:)

[rickagain]

Ooops

I didn't mean to break any rules...

Anyway - I got a reply from Google which basicaly said country specific searches display results from web sites hosted in that country. They went on to tell me that hosting my site in Australia would allow it to appear in the 'pages from Australia' results.

My question to Google explained that I didn't have an Australian (.au) domain - so I guess in their answer they realised asking me to change my domain name wasn't wasn't an option, so it wasn't discussed.

In my own research I've seen .au domains - hosted outside Australia, appear in the 'pages from Australia' results.

Also - as mentioned in this thread, hosting outside Australia, using an Australian name server may also work - But it wasn't in my question to Google, so it wasn't in their answer.

[Woz]

This is interesting. At SES Sydney March 2003 we were told by Google people that having a country listing in DMOZ was also enought to get you listing in that Country's Google. Now they are not mentioning that. Curious.

Onya
Woz

[whats up skip]

I suspect it all about politics or business, but Google don't want you to think that anything is more important than them, particularly not the DMOZ.

Google still needs the DMOZ, they just don't want people to know that.