How Can Google Improve Geo-Targeted SERPs for Users?

[Whitey]

There's a lot of good and intense threads on the boil at the moment with regards to the management of multi lingual and geo related websites including duplicate content , site architectures , multiple TLD's in networks etc etc.

Also there's the issue of Google's commercial strategies in serving results at it's commercial convenience.

But , enough of this ..... it's a big and boiling set of subject worthy of a lot of discussion elsewhere on those other threads .

Let's flip the thinking over to the user's side for a different starting point. It might help to form some perpective on how far adrift users , Google and webmasters are.... forget about Google's preferences and webmaster's reactions and desires to be No 1 across the entire world.

'Cos I'm not sure Google's got it right in the minds of it's users with it's selective and erratic display of geo related results.

What do you think users want to see when they search for a widget that has multi national appeal? or what do you think they don't want to see ? And what concerns does that give you as a webmaster trying to cater for this ?

[tedster]

Along these lines, there is a recent Google Help Video [youtube.com] where Matt Cutts addresses geographic targeting again. He indicates that the geographic targeting team is making changes "more and more over time" and that's an indicator to me that Google knows they need improvement.

I have seen a better blend recently when I do product/service searches that could be local in intent, but also could be generic. This is the area where as a user, historically, I've been the most frustrated and I've been happy to see it getting better.

Now the actual content of the Local OneBox - that's still a bit of a jungle, as a trip through the posts in our Local Search Forum [webmasterworld.com] shows. But I'd say there's a better balance on the regular SERPs than there used to be at least from the US.

[potentialgeek]

Speaking of geotargeting, here's some website data from a one-month period (the last 30 days) I compiled out of curiosity for the relevance of "geotargeted" search engine use for one site.

Question: How many internet users use the Google search engine for their country? (e.g: google.ca or google.co.uk or google.com.au).

The following data is from Google Analytics using a User Defined Value string that gives the Full Referrer URL.

UK

43,660 Visits

36,354 via Google

31,429 via google.co.uk

[86%]

Canada

34,756 Visits

29,444 via Google

24,412 via google.ca

[83%]

Australia

17,254 Visits

14,481 via Google

12,550 via google.com.au

[87%]

Users are very geocentric in their search engine choice. The numbers are higher than I expected, but--and many webmasters outside America may not know this--Google force redirects users who visit google.com to their country's google site. Unless the user knows how to make Google.com their engine by changing the default settings, they will use the country-specific engine.

To improve its geotargeted SERPs Google could A/B test user behavior responding to the basic google.com search results and those its current algo perceives are more relevant to the location. Or just stop the force redirects and see what happens!

Personally I think the default settings are wrong. They should be opt-in instead of opt-out. I'd like to see the data which shows users 51 times out of a hundred or more want their national search engine to be the default engine.

p/g