I can't find a setting at www.google.com to view US results, perhaps there is a service online that lets me do this by having their server based in the UK?
Any advice appreciated
Sorry for the confusion
The original query - [google.com...]
The us results - [google.com...]
2 - Then check them here <link removed>
3 - In IE, Insert working proxy details into Tools > Internet Options > Connections > LAN > "Use a Proxy Server"
Hint - We find the proxies on ports 80,8000,8080 are best.
Doing this allows you to check SERPs for anywhere in the world.
[edited by: eWhisper at 12:58 pm (utc) on Aug. 15, 2005]
[edit reason] Please Don't Drop URLs Tos [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]
I’ve been looking for some way that I could make money online. I read one of the e-Books that tell people how to use Google Adwords to promote affiliate programs. One of their suggestions is to create ads that run in countries other than the US. That makes sense to me since the US market seems to be using Adwords a lot.
In order to effectively advertise in another country I think it’s necessary to be able to see exactly what the competition is and what they are saying in their ads. In order to do that I have to be able to see every ad that would appear in a particular search for a particular key word. I think that Google makes this very difficult because of their ability to target ads to a very specific region.
Google checks the IP when someone does a search. They use it to target ads to a specific location. According to their help page it’s possible to narrowly target a campaign to a very specific market. They can even use latitude and longitude coordinates to define a specific area where an ad will run. It looks like that if I wanted to target the single block of houses within my neighborhood that I could do it with Google Adwords.
Of course I know that that kind of targeting relies on how good the information is that Google gets about the IP that the searcher is using. The neighborhood targeting probably works pretty good, but I seriously doubt that they can have 100% accuracy.
As far as targeting a city or a state I would think that Google can do that pretty well.
When I posed the question to Google support I told them about some of the ideas I had came up with that might be able to fool Google into letting me see ads in a particular country while I’m searching from the US. I told them about the idea I had seen in the original e-book I had read. They suggest that using a product called the anonymizer would work. The software uses a proxy to mask a surfers IP. The anonymizer uses an anonymous proxy. I don’t have any idea where it is. If I were to use it then I would be using that IP. To Google I would look like I was searching from wherever that IP was. I had taken this idea one step farther. I thought that I might get better results by using a proxy from the specific country I wanted to see Adwords ads from.
I tested both ideas before contacting Google. I tested both proxy ideas and as a control I was using the URL for the Google search engine in that particular country. I think I was using France. I was searching using Google.fr directly and I was searching on Google.fr using both proxy methods. I managed to get 1 ad that came up differently between the methods I was using.
I didn’t have any confidence in the results I got.
When I contacted Google they told me to use the International links found at [google.com...] . They also said that I could use the proxy idea but that simply using the correct URL such as Google.fr or Google.be would work the same or better.
In the earlier post financialhost is asking about being able to see US ads from the UK. Marttali’s answer looks a lot like using the Google.fr URL. By adding the US into the search string you are designating that Google is to use the US Google. The only trouble is that there isn’t any Google.us URL to use. Then Johnser mentions proxies, but the URL in his post have been deleted.
Obviously all of the methods I’ve checked out do produce some results, but my question is whether any method can produce truly accurate results. When I’ve done searches using these techniques I have found out that at least for the search terms I was using that there are very few advertisers. Not having too many or even any advertisers for a particular key word brought mixed emotions. I was VERY happy and excited at first but then I realized that there is a good chance that I wasn’t seeing all the ads that may be running in a particular country.
I would imagine that someone in this forum has advertised on an international basis. Can anyone confirm whether these methods are reliable?
Any comments and or advice any body has would be greatly appreciated. As I said earlier I’m just exploring the idea of advertising using Adwords. The e-book I read and most of the sales pages for other e-books make it seem like a very easy and profitable program. I don’t have a big budget. I can’t burn $1000s testing and learning. Right now I have a lot more time than money. I’m putting that time into research. Finding this forum group is probably the best thing that I have discovered so far. I have read a lot of the posts, and I have learned quite a bit.
Thank you
Steven
As for what you say about google.com / google.fr. You are right, there is no google.com explicit US version. The ads shown are always local. For other countries the local google sites DO show ads from those countries, regardless of where you are, ie google.fr always shows french ads even if you view from US. Its only google.com that is different.
The simplest answer is use &gl=xx, you should always get the right ads.
For local targetting within a country Im unsure if theres any way of doing it.
As for getting past the regional targeting I've given it more thought. The ONLY way I could think of is to use a proxy that has an IP within the area you want to see. Other than that I don't think there would be any way to get past the system.
Thanks again.
I'm off to read all the other posts that have passed trough here since I last had a chance to go over them. There is A LOT of good info in here. This forum is the best information resource I've found so far. I plan to try to get as much as I can from it.
Who knows, MAYBE I'll be able to answer someone elses question someday.
