Ranking well everywhere BUT the US!

[ghs advertising]

Hello,I have been optimizing my website for quite sometime and have seen progress on Google. However, in the past month, I have seen the weirdest thing I've ever encountered:

For the top 3 keywords in my industry, I rank on the 1st to 4th pages for Google.COM in pretty much all countries BUT the US.

For example, if I get someone in the UK to type my top keyword in google.COM, they can see my site on the first or second page.(Even if they do it at google.co.uk,not much difference)

Same thing if I get someone to do it in the Philippines, or Australia, though the ranking is slightly different.

However, if someone in the US is searching for those keywords, my site is nowhere to be seen! Not even on the top 20 pages!

This can be confirmed when I use the GOOGLE AdTargetingPreviewTool.

I know google has DC's all over the world, which are updated at different times.

However, I cannot find out a reason why my site can rank high ANYWHERE BUT the US.

My site is hosted in the US, marketing to the international market but definitely with a focus in the US. (with a 1-800 toll free number, and a California address, etc.)

In the AdTargetingPreviewTool, you can choose the city. If you choose Vancouver,Canada,I am up there, but for Seattle, WA, I am nowhere to be seen. Those cities are just 2 hrs away, but one is in Canada and the other US.

I am talking about Google.COM here and not the international google in each country.And even if you search on google.ca in Canada, my site is up there too but it's missing in google.ca checked in the US too!

So how in the world can Google rank my site anywhere else in the world but the US when they can clearly tell the site is VERY Americanized?

Any input would be highly appreciated!

[tedster]

Hello ghs, and welcome to the forums.

We've been getting a number of reports like this recently - a very current one is here:
Doing well in CA, but we sell to the world! [webmasterworld.com]

I'm hoping we attract more input for your questions - especially from anyone who has faced and fixed this challenge, which seems to be quite new.

The one thing you didn't mention is your inbound links picture - the backlink profile. By any chance do you have a loew percentage of US baclinks?

[ghs advertising]

Hello,this is really weird,because we rank great anywhere BUT the US. After hours of research, I just found google determined our website is based out of China?!

Actually,I am Chinese and I did leave a Chinese address in whois,but the domain was registered at godaddy and I have been using domainsbyproxy.com since day one!

Godaddy is based out of US and I am hosting in the US too,everything on the site is geared toward the US. Can a hidden whois make google think I am in China? And since it's hidden how in the world could google find out the original whois?

Also,I am hosting a few other sites on the SAME EXACT SERVER, but they were registered via namecheap and are using whois guard. The real whois is not in China or US, but google thinks ALL those sites are US based, which is what I wanted.

But why would Google think my main site is based out of China and NOT US?

After further research, I realized the first thing SE would look at is host IP and country TLD. Since I am using .com, they must have looked at IP.

However, according to <an online tool> none of my sites' IPs can be determined while the IP is clearly based out of US.

FYI, I am using robots.txt file on all my domains, could this be the reason for SE's to be unable to trace the IP to its country?

So I think what happened was google couldn't find where we were based any other way, so they somehow snooped into HIDDEN whois info,or they had a deal with godaddy and since it was the only place that revealed country to them, they think I am based out of China.

And because of this little thing, I am doing GREAT in China for all my keywords but saw no ranking in the US!

Does this sound logical? I can't find any possible reasons!

[edited by: tedster at 4:25 pm (utc) on April 25, 2008]

[internetheaven]

registered at godaddy

Hmmmm ... interesting. The ONLY site I am having a problem with:

see [webmasterworld.com...]

is the only one registered with GoDaddy. I had to have it with them due to the way we bought the domain from another individual.

Could GoDaddy be the problem?

Mike

[ByronM]

I have been experiencing the same issues. I think google thought my site was french mostly because the brand isn't a word in any dictionary but they may have stemmed it as being french :)

Anyway, i went into the webmaster tools and made sure my site preference was US. I'll see if that helps.

I was wondering why i was getting tons of orders over seas and hardly anything stateside outside of referral traffic.

[adcoutkast]

does the geo preference in the console affect your serp position? for example, i had my site set to target usa and my main kw was ranked #3. i changed the target to "everywhere" last night and this morning same kw is now #11. coincidence?

[ghs advertising]

Hello,I have no idea why we have NO RANKING IN THE US when we could be on 1st page on Google for other countries, even though Google thought I was in China, I am still ranked high in Canada.

Can anyone give me CLEAR INSTRUCTIONS on how to get Google to change my site's country to the USA? Most of our customers are in the US anyway.

[Hissingsid]

Hi ghs,

[google.com...]

I'd also consider changing your Whois address.

Cheers

Sid