Disappeared in Web Results But Not Australian Results For Certain Keyphrase

[merlin78]

Hi,

The site I work for has disappeared out of the web results for our most popular keyphrase (new cars) over the last couple of months and I would like to hear any thoughts on why this may be occurring? If I select "Australian only" results in Google the site ranks number 1 for the same keyphrase. I don't understand how it can rank number 1 in Australian results but in all the web results it has disappeared altogether.

Google Web Results (http://www.google.com.au/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLG,GGLG:2005-33,GGLG:en&q=new+cars)

Australia Only Results (http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&safe=off&rls=GGLG%2CGGLG%3A2005-33%2CGGLG%3Aen&q=new+cars&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryAU)

I don't believe we have done anything to warrant this as if there was some form of penalty would it not also affect the Australian only result as well. I would appreciate any feedback which may help me determine what is possibly causing this. Thanks

[glengara]

You may need some fellow Australian member's input as it seems a specific Google.com.au problem, you're top for "new cars australia" in various Gs, so it doesn't look like a penalty.

[nuthin]

Hi,

The reason why your website would have been ranking on www.google.com.au in the first place, for such a high profile keyword phrase like 'new cars' is because of Google's regional filtering they do.

Congrats for the ranking, your up against some good competition. :)

Unlucky that your website dropped from the default search on www.google.com.au but I don't think you can control things like this on your end. It was more than likely Google doing a tweak to there regional filtering algorithm and unfortunately your site got caught out.

Generally with the regional filtering Google do, they try and include a mix of regional (Australian sites) and other sites that are already highly placed on the .com for that term. You will find that they will only let through a select few Australian sites to rank.

What causes websites to become part of the filtered results to show on the default? Well I'm not too sure anybody knows besides Google.

I notice your website has good quality backlinks, so I'm not too sure what else you can do from your end. Just have to hope for the best that Google tweaks there regional filtering again in your favour ;)

That leaves the question... does anybody out there know what leads to a website being filtered through to the top on regional Google's?