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Can someone explain to me why sites such as AOL and Freeserve claim to use Google results but they are very different. For lots of keywords I am on the front page of Google UK often top but in these other SEs I am nowhere at all even if I use a specific search including my hometown etc. Any advice greatly appreciated?
I've just checked AOL and my results do mirror the Google.com results but only on the worldwide. On the UK only search (AOL) I don't show. Is this because my domain ends not with .uk but with .info and if so can I do anything about this?
If I want to get better UK hits should I have a seperate site with .co.uk or is .info o.k?
Are you sure the top results aren't just PPC results from a provider like Overture, E-Spotting etc.
When it comes to labeled as a uk sites there is 2 main things to do, have a .co.uk domain and host your site in the UK.
There have been 2 good topics lately about this:
Top in Google.com but no where in Google.co.uk [webmasterworld.com]
And
uk hosted site not appearing in google.CO.UK [webmasterworld.com]
AOL does a domain filter on a UK only search. Any non .uk domains are removed. This is not the same as Google UK which bases its' filter on hosting location. Freeserve does the same thing.
Remember that on Freeserve Google results are backfill to paid Overture UK results. On some searches this means you won't get to Google powered results unless you go down 3 or 4 pages.
