Google UK the only Google scraper haven?

more scraper pages in UK Google than in similar markets in US?

[internetheaven]

I'm thinking of targetting US and creating sites for US visitors as all UK search engines (MSN, Yahoo & Google) are jam packed full of spam and nothing seems to be being done about it. It is so bad that 2 out of the top 10 results for one query on Google UK even had "scraper.php" and "scrape.cgi" in the URLs of the ranking pages! They know they can get away with it so feel free to flaunt it.

I've searched similar markets in the US to my markets here and can't find the spam ranking well at all. I'd like some thoughts as to why this is the case before taking the plunge into the overseas markets for my industries.

Thanks
Mike

[tedster]

I don't know if this is really the case as a general rule, or just seems so for now. From the posts we see here, it does seem that Google UK has a hearty share of problems -- especially given that the UK population is only about 20% of the US population.

[glitterball]

I have a very big problem with how most search engines are localised, though some are worse than others (msn's Uk search is beyond belief).

I think that if you search for the word "plumber" in London, then okay, you are probably looking for a plumber in London.
However if you search for "plumber in New York" from a computer in London, then you are probably not looking for a list of plumbers in New York that have web sites hosted in the UK.

To be honest, I don't believe that localised results based on a searcher's physical location are helpful to the majority of queries and therefore should not be forced down user's throats.

- Sorry about the use of "plumber", but "widget" doesn't illustrate the point that I'm trying to make.

[tedster]

I hear you, but why would localized results for the UK tend to show more scraper sites? Or maybe they don't?

[internetheaven]

I hear you, but why would localized results for the UK tend to show more scraper sites?

Testing? Spam watching? Adwords pushing? (sometimes the adwords are the only relevant results) The UK population would be perfect for such - i.e. big enough to give enough search data, small enough that bad results won't impact Google's bottom line too badly.

They allow spam to rank in the UK search engine because it gives them the data they need to combat it in the US effectively. Just a theory ... personally in the early days (this has been the way for nearly two years now), I'd always believed that they were just pushing clicks because either you click on an Adwords ad or you click on a scraper which has Adsense on it.