Filters dialed down in national Gs?

[glengara]

I sort of suspect the filters in national Googles are dialed up/down to maximise the numbers in the "Pages from..." results.

With Ireland/G.ie this is quite understandable as a strict application of the filters might well bring just a handful of results.
However, when the first four results for "link text" feature "text link", you wonder if knobs need to be turned.

Came across an interesting case yesterday...

A page ranks 3 in the "Pages from the UK" results for "widget manipulator Leeds" but is nowhere in the "web search" results, the interesting part being the page was full of hidden text.

He's fixing it up, and it'll be interesting to see whether it will then feature in the "web search" results....

[tedster]

when the first four results for "link text" feature "text link", you wonder if knobs need to be turned.

Indeed! I assume that beginning with #5, the word order is preserved more often.

Google seems to be very active in all sorts of localization efforts this month - both on the coutry TLDs and by geo-filtering reults on google.com [webmasterworld.com]. We may not be anywhere near stability right now.

[glengara]

Another oddity is where a page down around 5/6 in "Pages from Ireland" is the first Irish page to turn up in "web search" results.

If not filter related the only other explanation is linkage related IMO, I could see where a wider/more authoritative link profile makes the page more relevant in the broader context.

[tedster]

I also wonder if there's some bugginess implementing the relatively new feature that lets you Tell Google Your Site's Location with Webmaster Tools [webmasterworld.com]. It was introduced near the end of Oct 2007 and is just now gathering some momentum with end users. Perhaps its interation with the SERPs is not yet so good.