Forum Moderators: martinibuster
It occurred to me that they use widgets in the UK as well as in the USA. So, I thought, what about a few pages about widgets in Bath, widgets in Essex, etc.?
I have no clue how to use AdSense in this context. Do I need to sign up with a UK version of Google? If I just create a page for, say, widgets in Birmingham (UK) how will AS keep from reading it as widgets in Birmingham, Alabama?
Sorry if this is a stupid question. I'll bet it is. Still, I can't figure it out...
The adsense preview tool doesn't necessarily show ads that are actually showing in the area you select. I have this problem seeing what ads are showing in the US, so I use a proxy server in the US to see my pages.
It's all rather dependant on there being enough advertisers that are bidding high enough to show as well. Maybe here in the UK advertisers would be more inclined to target the UK as a whole, and not specific towns or cities. Also, some of the higher bidders might be from outside the UK with a worldwide campaign, so are more likely to show than a local ad.
My advice would be to knock up a couple of pages with lots of relevant content, use the section targeting tool and see what happens.
However (from what I remember) this costs the advertiser more and there are still plenty of advertisers that just advertise with specific geo targeting.
As far as I know you wouldn't need to sign up to a specfic UK version of Adsense - Adsense should automatically change the ads depending on the visitors to your site.
Yes it's possible that Adsense would confuse Birmingham (UK) with Birmingham (Alabama) - but I would've thought this was merely the fault of an advertiser choosing the keyword Birmingham and not realising that there is more than one rather than a problem with the Adsense algorithm itself.
To summarise - if it's the same site, just keep using the same Adsense codes. Google will figure out what are the best ads to display.
I'm not sure you need to have a .co.uk domain to do this.
This argument has reigned for ages and especially so in the Google Search News forum.
In my experience, 12+ years, and most others, you do not need a .co.uk domain name but to be hosted on UK based servers to rank well in Google.co.uk. I have many .com domains ranking at the top of Google.co.uk however ALL are hosted here.
Nearly all these same domains actually also rank at the top of Google.com therefore do not worry about a penalty there.
Using a .co.uk does sometimes seem to have a benefit when not hosted in the UK BUT it is not as secure as UK hosting. I know there are instances of members using US servers ranking well in the UK however they are generally accepted to be in the small minority.
Definitely do not use Europe's largest hosting provider who lie through their teeth saying that their servers are in the UK when they are actually based in Germany! Those users especially have a difficult time ranking in .co.uk.
Maybe here in the UK advertisers would be more inclined to target the UK as a whole, and not specific towns or cities.
In general I would agree with this since for most items it is relatively easy for anything to be delivered economically within 24 hours, even 1 ton pallet loads using a well-known distribution service.
One thing for certain is that Google.co.uk is taking a much larger proportion of Google UK searches these days. Figures I have for March 2005 show the following for overall UK resident searches:
1. google.co.uk (63.33%)
2. search.msn.co.uk (7.86)
3. google.com (7.70)
4. uk.search.yahoo.com (5.50%)
5. ifind.freeserve.com (4.45%)
6. search.yahoo.com (2.93%)
7. ask.com (1.92%)
8. search.msn.com (1.22%)
9. ask.co.uk (1.22%)
10. altavista.com (0.71%)
What proportion of that is Google.co.uk only as opposed to "Search the web" I do not have.
Anyone have the stats on this?
Our main site is .co.uk, and hosted in the UK, and we have strikingly different stats to this: google.com is nearly 4 times the google.co.uk referrals. However, our pages are mostly of general interest, and not specifically aimed at UK users.
>What proportion of that is Google.co.uk only as opposed to
> "Search the web" I do not have.
We don't pull out this data specifically, but based on a quick look at a smallish sample of google.co.uk referrals, about 25% have clicked the option for UK pages, 75% stay with the default of 'search the web'. If you want stats drawn from a wider database, I could get it in a week's time (I'm away most of this coming week).
>If I just create a page for, say, widgets in Birmingham (UK)
>how will AS keep from reading it as widgets in Birmingham,
>Alabama?
The advertisers will take care of this themselves in their Adwords screen. They choose the geographical regions in which to display. This has nothing to do with the location of the host, but rather the location of the surfer. So, ads from people wanting to sell widgets in the UK will only appear on the screen when the surfer is based in the UK.
Ie: a visitor from Birmingham, USA will see an ad from a widget supplier in the USA. A visitor from Birmingham, UK, will see an ad from a widget supplier in the UK.
Our main site is .co.uk, and hosted in the UK, and we have strikingly different stats to this: google.com is nearly 4 times the google.co.uk referrals.
I'm glad you wrote that since the last figures I saw were about 20% of Google.co.uk user using the .co.uk rather than "Search the web" therefore your figures may be accurate for your site.
The figures I had were for ALL users using search within the UK and those using Google.co.uk, they do not specify the breakdown between the two searches.
One thing I have noticed is a definite increase in .co.uk specific seaches in referral logs recently and I have just found the following dated 10th October 2005 "netimperative.com/2005/10/10/Google_UK_searches" which now shows Google.com and .co.uk collectively at 70% of combined UK searches!
It will be interesting to see your stats.
OK, I'll do some analysis in just over a week. Feel free to chase/sticky me in a week and a half if I haven't posted anything by then.
In my experience, 12+ years, and most others, you do not need a .co.uk domain name but to be hosted on UK based servers to rank well in Google.co.uk. I have many .com domains ranking at the top of Google.co.uk however ALL are hosted here.Nearly all these same domains actually also rank at the top of Google.com therefore do not worry about a penalty there.
Just to be contrary, I have a .com domain that is hosted here in the UK, yet it's in the top 3 on google.com as well as google.co.uk. So I'd say that where the domain is hosted isn't that relevant to search engine position, or ads selected. I view the site via a US proxy to check what ads are showing.
Definitely do not use Europe's largest hosting provider who lie through their teeth saying that their servers are in the UK when they are actually based in Germany! Those users especially have a difficult time ranking in .co.uk.
I know exactly who you mean here, but it's interesting that sites hosted with them are poorly ranked. Thankfully they are not my hosting company!
Just to be contrary, I have a .com domain that is hosted here in the UK, yet it's in the top 3 on google.com as well as google.co.uk.
I think you didn't quite read my posting correctly:
I have many .com domains ranking at the top of Google.co.uk however ALL are hosted here.Nearly all these same domains actually also rank at the top of Google.com therefore do not worry about a penalty there.
I agree with what you are saying, maybe I was not clear enough however, in my experience, I have to totally disagree with you about this:
So I'd say that where the domain is hosted isn't that relevant to search engine position,
Google definitely favours geo-location of domains outside of the US.com results. I have experienced this with many domains in several different languages including Chinese, French, German, Indian, Italian and Spanish, moreover some Google results can be even more specific such as Google.at and the multi-lingual Google.ch offering not only the choice of language as well as Web and Country:
[google.ch...]
Hi there! Just to clarify, AdSense automatically geo-targets ads based on your users' IP addresses. For example, a user in India will see ads targeted to an Indian audience. Alternatively, your users in the UK will see ads targeted to a UK audience. All ads are content-targeted.
This means that the ads you see appearing on your pages might be different than the ads your international users see. AdWords advertisers choose which countries they'd like to target with their ads. A U.S. company might choose to target audiences in India, Japan and Thailand, for example.
If you'd like to see the ads your international users see, you can use the Google AdSense preview tool. For more information or to download the preview tool, check out:
[google.com...]
I'm not sure you need to have a .co.uk domain to do this. Adsense targets on the page content, so if you have enough keywords for the bot to realise you are targetting the UK, then in the UK relevant ads should be shown.
Remember that there are two elements here
1. Ads that come about because of your site and all its parameters.
2. Geo-targeted ads that alter these in 1 above because as ASA says, the user may be based in another country, and another ad would be more relevant
My own experience with worldwide hotels, leads me to believe that as long as a page (or group of pages) is taking about hotels in say Dayton, Ohio, then those ads continue to be presented as they are the most relevant. In other words if the user is living in Bangkok, Thailand, then he still gets Dayton Ohio hotels, and not Bangkok hotels.
As Another poster said "experiment" and see.
