Geographic Location in Webmaster Tools - any joy?

[glengara]

Has anyone with a general TLD managed to get a sub domain/directory/ folder included in the "Pages from ...." of a "foreign" regional G?

Qualifying criteria seem somewhat unclear, for example is there a "bricks and mortar" requirement?

[tedster]

I've only tried this in a couple cases - no success so far in showing up for "pages from", although it has helped in the general search results for the country-specific Google. From my reading of the tool, there was no explicit mention of the "pages from" search, so I wasn't expecting that kind of result.

[glengara]

True it was never mentioned, though IIRC it was touted as an alternative to IP/ccTLD which do get you listed in "Pages from ....".

These get boosted in the "web search" results, so if the geographic tool doesn't give that "local" boost it's not really a viable alternative.

[g1smd]

There's a bug in there, or certainly an oddity.

They report the domain as "(.GB)" but it is actually ".uk" for the site I am trying it with at the moment.

[glengara]

G1smd you're familiar with G.co.uk, would you agree on the importance a listing in "Pages from the UK" can have on the "web search" results?

[g1smd]

Other than making sure that I have met the criteria to have the site show up in the country-specific list, I haven't really studied it all that much.

I know there can be many differences between the world and country SERPs, but believe that I don't have that much leeway to influence them all that much.

It is important for the site to show up in the country-specific SERPs because some of the searchers will be using that option. Some will use it exclusively.

[glengara]

If you look at "web design" in the "web search" results, 18 of the top 20 are UK sites that more or less mirror their positions in "pages from the UK", the two "foreign" ones are Wikipedia and a site that ranks worldwide for the term.

Where there's strong local competition G will favour it in to the detriment of "foreign" pages, making the days where one page could dominate the SERPs worldwide close to over.

Obviously when local competition is low "foreign" pages feature better, but that geographically targeted sub domain/directory/folder would still be up against the "world" competition for the term.