Google Screenshots show US Geo-Targetting - can I get it to show UK?

[Simsi]

Noticed today that when I hover over the magnifying glass to get a screenshot of my site on Google.co.uk SERPS, the screenshot shows content that is geo-targetted for the US.

Clearly this means that the Googlebot taking the capture is US-based but I wondered if there was any way to get it to show the UK content in Google UK?

I'm guessing not but would love to be enlightened.

[lucy24]

There was a similar question recently about pricing as displayed on results pages. Conclusion: the googlebot does its stuff in the US, so you will always get US results, no matter where you are (or say you are).

Incidentally, I have only just noticed that it isn't really a screenshot. The pictures and design may be yours, but the text is rendered from scratch in a sans-serif font that's readable at small sizes but doesn't show non-Latin text.

[pierrefar]

Hi,

The solution to this kind of issue is to keep the different geotargeted content on separate URLs accessible by Googlebot and your users. There are many ways to do this so just one example would be to use example.com/usa/ and example.com/uk/ etc. You can then use Webmaster Tools to geotarget each URL correctly.

The upshot is that the content is shown to user regardless of their location, and so we can generate instant previews correctly. Of course, keeping the users in mind, be sure to give them an easy way to view content for other geographies if they want.

We have lots of help about this:

Read this first: [googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...]

More help: [google.com...] [google.com...]

[Hopefully it's OK to post these links. Mods, please let me know if it's not.]

[tedster]

Thank you Pierre. This video from Google's Maile Ohye might also be helpful: IP Delivery: Background and Considerations [youtube.com]

(Pierre is a Google Webmaster Trends Analyst who first posted here in April [webmasterworld.com])