Google.com Vs. Google.ca & UK

What are the real reasons for variations of results?

[AlwaysWorkin]

I've done a lot of searching at WW for topics on this and I'm surprised how little I found (or I'm not searching for the right keywords).

Is there anywhere I can get good information on how google.ca gets their results compared to google.com?

We do well on google.com but horrible through Google Canada and Google UK. I'm really looking to understand the reasons as I have to say I'm very clueless on the topic.

Thanks

[rainborick]

All of the various Googles give a lot of weight to geo-location, even when the user does not request "in-this-country-only" results. That's the biggest reason you see variations between them.

[glengara]

I recently looked at "web widget" on the various English language Gs, both the normal search and the allinanchor results differed through the inclusion of "local" pages.

I got the impression G is trying to regionalise "web search" results and is giving "local" links/anchor text a boost to do so.

[AlwaysWorkin]

Thanks for the replies. I've noticed some sites ranking high in both regional Google sites and when I check the host I find them to be located in the US. I can't begin to understand how they manage to score high in the results being a US company.

Always a search for information. :)

[glengara]

For generic terms there seems to be a "core" of allinanchor results that feature on all Gs, just how well they feature depends on local competition, and due to size/history most of these sites are from the US...

[Crush]

G is localasing. As simple as that. More targeted, better for the users on the most part.

[M_Bison]

i've noticed this too.

is it just local links/anchor text that helps ranking, or is it something else?

[glengara]

*..or is it something else? *

On that "web widget" search on G.co.uk I noticed some of the UK results were nowhere in the allinanchor for that term but were tops for "website widget", "web widgeting" terms.

It struck me that if G wants to localise while still keeping their qualitative parameters rather than simply drilling down on one search term to find UK sites they could include the top results for closely related terms.

[Whitey]

G is localasing. As simple as that. More targeted, better for the users on the most part.

If it works.

There's a discussion over here on key aspects of localisation filters that appear not to be clearly understood and potentially not working properly. It's a topic for clarification by G [ IMO ], but I've only heard of anecdotal inputs from G to clarify - nothing direct.

Duplicate Content on Localised Search [webmasterworld.com]