Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
This problem appeared only 2 weeks ago and affected not only my site but also several sites in top 10 for the same keywords. These sites also lost their top positions for the USA data centers.
How can you explain this behavior of Google data centers?
May there be any database problems on American data centers that Google still haven't noticed?
Can I do anything to improve the situation?
i am sitting here in south africa, with a local IP, and if i search google.co.uk, i know i get different results from someone with a UK IP searching for the same term on google.co.uk.
is it possible to search directly on a local UK datacenter? i have heard that they actually took the local datacenters offline and the global results are all served from a US cluster.
The only way I know that can predictably see google.com results as they might appear to a person searching from any given country is to search google.com using an IP address in that country - through a VPN or a proxy server for instance, as Smark described earier in this thread.
[edited by: tedster at 7:49 pm (utc) on Feb. 4, 2008]
There asre no dedicated IP addresses for the UK, or any other country. Google's localizing process is not apparently done by running separate data centers.
Google *does* have local datacenters outside of the U.S.
But they use U.S. IP allocations, as far as I know, for all of them, as well as for their routers on "GoogleNet".
BTW, there are tricks one can do with DNS (if using IPAnyCast, which I assume they are in the DNS infrastructure) to send users to the "nearest" server.
While IPAnyCast only works for UDP packets (which DNS usually uses), it's possible to tie DNS servers to web servers through a back-end interface. This is what Akami does to serve-up content from local servers.
The beauty of it is that it isn't dependent on geolocation - it's based on route timing only.
So, there's one more source of geolocation information that Google can use - which DNS server location did IPAnycast pick for a given user?
Again, with all things geolocation, it is just a guess, and inaccuracies are inevitable.
All I can say is FINALLY! Our sector had been dominated by .co.uk and .au sites for ages - absolutely useless to US and Canada users, as none of the companies sell in these countries.
I just checked, and my IP is assigned to Australia, while I am in Malaysia. I wonder if this could be the cause.
1.) Local sites do much better on the local google site, compared to google.com.
2.) As German is also spoken in Austria and Switzerland, it was easy to compare results in these three countries: The results differ from country to country, so the language does not seem to be an important factor (if at all). In fact, english language sites that are hosted in Germany also get a significant boost on Google.de.
3.) TLDs might be a factor, but if so, only a minor one.
However, in the last weeks something changed. For example: A site from Austria did very well in Austria and only mediocre in Germany and Switzerland for the last six month (just the way you would expect geo targeting to work, giving the local site a boost). Two weeks ago, the results flipped - they site now does much better in Germany, while the results for Austria worsened a lot.
It seems, Googe now thinks the Austrian site is a German site. While its hard to guess why, a factor may be that most of the IBL come from sites hosted in Germany - maybe the IBL profile now became a more important factor? Any other observations in this direction?
I could see where German links would help in G.de but that wouldn't explain the fall in G.at.
the site shows on google.at for "Sites from Austria", but not on google.de for "Sites from Germany". Stupid I didnīt think of checking this myself. So obviously, Google still is associating the correct country with the web site in question.
However, checking both google.at and google.de, I noticed that the results are almost identical (if you search the whole web) - that's big news for the german seo market. It seems, currently Google's geo targeting does not make a difference between Germany and Austria. That's further evidence that Google's geo targeting is undergoing some larger changes at the moment (and works less precise).
On the webmaster tool thing, a "colleague" finally got it to work for a multi-lingual site and promised to blog about it, I'll post back when he does...
It turns out that sites optimized with geo keywords are the one suffering the most. I can't say it's really surprising but still, the impact is impressive.
I compared 5 sites and looked at different variables such as server location, TLDs, business location & the usage of geo keywords.
[edited by: tedster at 8:12 pm (utc) on Feb. 11, 2008]
[edited by: tedster at 8:51 pm (utc) on Feb. 11, 2008]
We have designed and hosted (for years) two competing companies websites for the same search terms and we have always adopted a white hat SEO policy.
Below are the titles of the home pages
#1 Company Name: UK Widget Manufacturer
and
#2 Company Name: UK widget manufacturer and supplier
Both sites are .com addresses and both sites are hosted on servers based in the USA.
Until recently both companies were in the top ten in both g.com and g.co.uk... now only company #2 is listed in both Googles.
Company #1 is not on g.co.uk at all but is doing great in g.com in the top 5 for most, if not all, products.
The only difference I can see between the two companies is that company #2 is very active on GoogleAdwords.
This same experience happened about two years ago... so I am not wholly convinced that it isn't for some other reason that I have yet to identify.
Does anyone else have a similar experience to the one above?
Thank you sincerely for reading.
TTFN
Are the domain names for both companies registered with UK addresses?
I have seen some evidence that Google may be using registration data again in some cases.
In all, I would think that it would be a good idea to make sure to take advantage of the setting in the Webmaster Tools for any site that's having trouble in this area. While there haven't been a large number of people reporting quick success, it certainly wouldn't hurt.
Wendy,
Are the domain names for both companies registered with UK addresses?
I have seen some evidence that Google may be using registration data again in some cases.
In all, I would think that it would be a good idea to make sure to take advantage of the setting in the Webmaster Tools for any site that's having trouble in this area. While there haven't been a large number of people reporting quick success, it certainly wouldn't hurt.
The location is set to the UK in Webmasters Tools and both domain names for each companies is set to their registered office addresses in the UK...
Thanks for your reply. :)
Which of the sites turn up in the "Pages from the UK" results?
There I was calling the sites #1 and #2, thinking I was being a clever clogs and I now realise that I should have been a heck of a lot more specific in my language! Apologies for that... let me be more specific now.
Searching www.google.co.uk (as when I type in google.com it reverts to .co.uk} for relevant keyword(s)...
#1 Company Name: UK Widget Manufacturer
This company is #1 'the web'
nowhere "Pages from the UK"
#2 Company Name: UK widget manufacturer and supplier
This company is #8 'the web'
This company is #6 "Pages from the UK"
Both companies are hosted with same company in USA.
Both domain name registered details are UK
Both sites have been under our control for approximately the same time... eight years or so.
The only difference I can see between the two companies is that company #2 is very active on GoogleAdwords.
When I access a Google Database directly (gfe-ug) then #1 company is #16 and #2 company is #48
This shows that there is a geographical influence which is flawed when someone searches 'pages from the UK'
Thank you very much for your question and sorry again for the lack of clarity in my original question.
Best wishes,
the site ranked at top 10 for [blue widget]. We changed the focus of the site to [green widget]. Now the site ranks at top 10 for both [blue widget] and [green widget] in international results, however the US results show it at top 10 only for [blue widget], while for [green widget] it ranks at about #350.
It is a weird combination of query specific geotargeting.
Did you change your title tag by any chance? I think that at about the same time my site dropped to #400+, I changed my title tag from "word word word ideas" to "word word word ideas Ķ word ideas".
I have moved from south africa to spain where i was top ranked in my relative region. Then Hola i met www.google.es and have been suffering to get to the top page. Maybe i should make fully spanish) The odd thing under google.co.za, google.de and others is "Bang" I am in the top rankings in those search engines. But google.es says go away and I am like page 9 and thats where i need the work!
Damm bizaar, even setup another hosting domian name so it is different from my original sa website. Even set the geographic status of my spanish company to local e.s and still on page 9!
I even created rss blog and forum feeds and still i suck, blast. Ok I know I am the new kid on the block so may take more time to mature and barcelona is huge, so frustrating figuring out this geographical SEo googly machine. Will read up your comments and try to apply, but there is def something fishy going on with geographic ip addresse etc.
So let me ask you this - say you promoting a service in canada and you do the effective seo part and if you dont have unique langauges and words etc targeted and the google.ru search engine for a sample then you dont get to your correct target market with all the geographic google sub domains. The bizaar thing is it looks like google is creating unique databases for those regions - maybe i am going nuts. I thought it was one big merry database in the US.
later thx again justin saludos
[edited by: tedster at 2:26 pm (utc) on Feb. 18, 2008]
Could always be a temporary G_litch, alternatively, and I'm just guessing here, if G "sees" those sites as too closely related they may restrict the numbers you can geotarget to the same location.
Something I hadn't considered... thanks...
Then I did a ping test of google.com and found that it has 64.233.161.147 IP adress.
Then I searched directly [64.233.161.147...] - my site is in top 10!
Then again [google.com...] - my site is on 50+ position.
Did you change your title tag by any chance? I think that at about the same time my site dropped to #400+, I changed my title tag from "word word word ideas" to "word word word ideas Ķ word ideas".
Yeah I did change my title from having [green widget tools] to [blue widget accessories] and [red widget accessories] in the title.
The keyphrases are obviously different, but I kept the relative identities between the old and the new in my example.
