different results for different countries

[mdj101]

Hi All,

Having to re-write this one due to being too specific, well we live and learn.

I have a domain name lets say example.com

This is a UK based business targeting UK customers.

Now, on google.co.uk if i search for the company name and tick 'the web' box i get results including my company website.

If i tick the 'sites from the uk' box I only get results returned from sites that contain my company name, but not actual results from my own site.

WHy is this?

[edited by: tedster at 4:57 pm (utc) on Mar. 21, 2007]
[edit reason] use example.com - it will never be owned [/edit]

[rainborick]

All of the major search engines rely on two major factors to determine the geo-location of a website: (1) the presence of a Country Code Top Level Domain name (CCTLD, as in "www.somesite.co.uk"), and (2) the physical location of the server that hosts the site, based on its IP address. Google also says they will sometimes consider the domain name registration information, but they're typically vague about how and when that happens. It hardly matters since Yahoo! and MSN do not seem to use that information at all.

What many people don't realize is that the country-specific incarnations of the search engines give a great deal of weight to geo-location in the rankings, even when the user does not select the country-only search filter option. So its important for any site that is targeting a specific country to understand this process.

There's a couple of additional factors at play for UK websites. Since late December, there have been a large number of reports of Google improperly determining the geo-location of .com domains that were actually hosted in the UK. Some progress has been made, but I still see complaints from time to time. Second, at least one popular UK hosting service has servers that are physically located outside the UK, resulting in problems for their customers in this regard.

Since your site is obviously not considered to be located within the UK, you have two choices: (1) change your domain name, or (2) change hosting services. Changing your domain name to a .co.uk TLD would solve the geo-location issue instantly, but since changing hosts is almost painless, that would be my recommendation.

[mdj101]

Hi There and thanks for your reply.

I do have the .co.uk of the same domain and this is a complete mirror of the .com site, althought i have this .co.uk as a site in 'my sites' on google webmastertools its still not being indexed by google.

As for the other scenario, we are our own host, and you are correct our servers are located outside the UK.