Target is US and Canada but only Ranking in Mexico?

[maximus12]

Have an interesting situation with GEO ranking. Our site has been ranking well in Mexico for a year now (Page 1). Naturally when you go to Google.com.mx you are allowed to select the English version (our site is in English targeted to US and CANADA). Our site is ranking very good for results when searching within Mexico (In English) but when I go to a Proxy and search the US results or Canadian proxy and search Canadian result we do not appear until Page 8,9,10!

Can anyone explain what we are doing wrong and how we can appear in US and Canadian searches? All out competitors are. We only have good ranking when searching within Mexico

Thanks,
Maximus

[goodroi]

Is you domain a .com or .com.mx?
In what country is your site hosted?
Which country sends you most of your website backlinks?
Have you made sure you are not looking at personalized serps?

[Planet13]

Is there a google places for google.com.mx? I would imagine if you have "verified" your page with google.com.mx then that would probably have an effect, too.

[SEOMike]

There is very good information about Google country biasing contained in Google Patent 7,451,130. Head over to Google's patent search and pull down the PDF. It's a good read and will help you understand some of the things that make a site rank in one country instead of another. The patent is from 2008 but I know from experience that a most of the stuff in it is still very relevant.

[maximus12]

The site is a .com.

And yes we have a Google places listings but done in Google.com not .com.mx. Can this really affect International rankings? Our competitors also have a Google Places listings and they are ranking well internationally.

SEOMike, can you email the link to that patent, I can't find it :)

[SEOMike]

Here's a link to the patent: Google Patent 7,451,130 [goo.gl]

[maximus12]

Thanks SEO Mike, I will check it out now.

Anyone else have any experience this is? How did you solve it?

[levo]

I had the exact same issue. I believe Google is using location/country of the websites who links to your website to determine your website's location/region.

If you're outside of US, its almost always less competitive and easy to get promoted/linked. And the more you get links from local "circles," the more Google associates you with that location.

I had to remove the section in local language, tried to decrease the local traffic/tweets/likes as much as possible, get more US/UK incoming links than local ones. Took me almost one year.