How Are Google Regional Results Created?

[AussieWebmaster]

yeah naming it after Jimmy would have made more sense.... the stairway to heaven is through Page Rank

[tomlee]

Hi,

I am new here, I am trying to create a web2.0 meta search engine, but I do not know which search result of Google, Yahoo, Live, Ask is better? Would you like offer some opinions on it? My website is perfectse.com, please give me some feedback if you like, thanks.

[AussieWebmaster]

Google and Ask seem to have good organic results... if you are going to use Ask I would hurry before it goes away

[jag]

Putting some lights to the thread. Google is more concerned with regional results now a days.

We have an option in GWT, if you are more specific in regional results and users in a particular location (country-specific search results) and also to improve Google search results for geographic queries. For more have a look at Google Help Geotargeting

Best,

[geotargeting]

I have read many posts in this forum and in other similar ones about this subject. The overall findings judging from the debate seem to be:
-geographical location does matter when it comes to search results listed in any country specific engine.
-geo location determination is primarily based upon IP address , domain name extension , and inbound links.
-though there might be ways to work around these issues in order to gain exposure in multi-country SEs the one stumbling block hard to overcome is duplicate content.
Meaning that even if one goes to the length of buying multiple domains like .ie , .co.uk , .com.au , .nz , .co.hk , .com.sg , .ph , .com , .ca , .in , .com.ae , .za etc. and gets one's website set-up on some kind of cloud server bringing in IP addresses from various locations , and hopefully getting some inbound links along the way - one will still have to provide similar but unique content for each domain in order to avoid having the 2-15 websites in English reduced to just one in the google index.
If one does have several domain names but only 1 unique set of pages these domains should re-direct to the main site rather than all carry the same content.
My question now is: if one has an English language website on a .com domain. And one is interested in getting more traffic from google.com.au (or google.ie etc.).
Would it help to register a .com.au domain and point this to one's .com domain ? or would it make no difference unless one would go the extra mile and produce a unique set of pages specifically for the Australian market.
And the second issue relating to duplicate content. If 2 websites e.g. a .com and a .com.au have 10% unique content and 90% identical content but running on separate domains and thus all pages having a 100% unique URL. E.g. in the case that all the info pages are unique but all the product pages are identical. Will the SEs pick on that ?
And can the geo-targeting setting in the google webmaster tool make any difference there ? I guess it does not allow for targeting several countries ?

I have tried to conduct some search tests comparing .at , .de , .ch results. All German language. The countries are bordering one another. Germany and Austria are members of the EU (no restrictions between them) - Switzerland is associated. Meaning that in one sense for a person living in Munich a search result from Salzburg could be more relevant than a result from Hamburg since Salzburg is much closer.
It does seem like the country specific SEs prefer the local domain extension (hosting + links). google.at will return more .at results even for a broad web search. However, there are some none-national domains included on the first pages as well. Primarily .de domains in the search results from .ch and .at SEs. Since Germany is a much bigger country and therefore the websites in Germany are more likely to attract more traffic and more links and thus being deemed more relevant it does make sense.
So what would be the best strategy in order to gain exposure from natural search in these 3 countries without having to create and maintain what would be essentially 3 identical websites simply to satisfy the demand of google for unique content ?
For a start to pick a .de domain and a German hosting solution since that seems to trump the other 2 but would additional .at and .ch domain redirecting to the .de domain have any effect ? A small subset of pages designed specifically for the country one wants to target ? Inbound links from .ch and .at websites to the .de website ? Cloud hosting to gain IP addresses from .at and .ch ?

[DUPoetry]

I'm glad that my UK hosting service was so crap that I moved my domain name and hosting to a US company, makes me feel better about the money I lost

[WarrantiesForLess]

Curious,

I am curious, everyone has their SEO strategies, some good, some not, but when you get to the top of Google organic natural search, that is a great feeling, but just as quick as you reach the top, poof, you are shuffled down several notches, and no significant changes to content were made, so makes me wonder what causes this, any ideas?

Success to all,

[jag]

Other sites user performance might be better comparatively – visitors time spent & bounce rate.

Best,

[goodroi]

A Partial List of Reasons Why You Don't Rank Anymore:
(yes, i have personally encountered all of these situations)


Your competition got better and pushed you down

The websites that linked to you have stopped

Your website has been hacked

Google is tweaking the algo & your website doesnt score as high with the new formula

Your webhost started to block search engine spiders because they "waste" bandwidth

You havent maintained the site and now 80% of your outbounds links are broken or poiniting to infected websites

Someone if your company made "improvements" to the website without asking

A fortune 500 company stolen your content and now you are filtered out with all the other duplicate content versions

You think you are ranking #1 but really you are only looking at personalized serps. When you log out you see your true rankings.

Plus many, many more reasons. SEO is an organic process that constantly requires monitoring & maintenance if you want to protect your good rankings.

[ezestseo]

Use also meta tags for geographic locations

[expertsguy]

hello ,
I've created my original mapusing Google Maps.
I've also used Google Earth to find a property, but I've just copied the coordinates at the search box in Google Maps, to find the right place on it and save the location.

[sannyhenry]

It is really a good thread which really provides the regional result information for all SEO beginners.

[staceymattew]

Domain ends in .au will comes in the Google SERP for Australia.