Hi all, I'm wondering..how does the search engines rank websites in google.ca and google.us (u.s) along with Yahoo U.S and Yahoo Canada. What differences and variables are looked at when G and Y! rank in both countries? I know someone with a website..it's been a Canadian targeted website (mostly) but it's hosted in the U.S. The business has spread to the U.S in the past few mths though. In google.ca it's listed #4 on page 1 for specific keywords. In Google U.S, the website is ranked on #3 on page 4. In yahoo it's on the same page 4 for u.s and canadian searches. As you can see...it ranks horrible in yahoo in both u.s and canada. Why doesn't yahoo canada like the site as much as google canada? In google, it ranks well in Canada but crappy in U.S. I say crappy b/c the keywords are not highly competitive and the top sites are not very well optimized, so page 4 is pretty bad. I would like to know..did google rank this website good in .ca because of the content? He hasn't done any off page seo at all on the site. How can he rank better in the U.S google search rankings? Should he write more content geared towards the U.S? Does he just need off page SEO? Thanks
.ca domain in Google.ca will give you a nice boost. Your site will rank much better in Google.ca than Google.com. I have no idea why Yahoo don't like your site though. It's always difficult to rank high in both Google and Yahoo because of the different algorithms.
If you want to see how it differs and compares in other countries download your query statistics from Google Webmaster Tools. Often Google ranks based on the popular nature of that topic in a particular country. If you want your ranking to improve in the United States, you could try writing articles pertaining to US news specifically. But all in all, you will probably have to wait in the sandbox and SEO your site in order to gain rankings in US.
zexy is right. if you want to rank high on google canada then .ca domain will help as a part of geo targeted seo. google will think that since the domain is .ca then it is related to canada so it ranks well in google canada. also, having links form .ca domain as well as sites hosted on canadian Ip will give you a boost in google canada result. for us, it just regular seo/link building without targeting any specific geo
I agree with sultanofseo. You need more links from Canadian websites. With geotargeting you need links from websites that are somehow related to the region you are targeting.
1. if site = domain.ca Advantage in google.ca 2. if site = domain.com Advantage in google.ca if site hosted in Canada and/or Canada targeted in google webmaster account Advantage in google.com if site hosted in the USA and or USA targeted in google webmaster account Advantage in google.ca means: - ranking in "pages from Canada" search with google.ca - better ranking in web search (i. e. world web) with google.ca
Like some others have said before me, two things that you can do to rank better is to use the ".ca" extension and find hosting in Canada. I have noticed for my website that I tend to rank better on Google Canada than Google (.com). However, if you optimize your website with quality back links, where your website is hosted and what domain extension it uses will not carry much weight, if any at all.
This could be due to TLD of the website. If your website in having country specific TLD then that website will be ranked well in that country..
Remember that a host may say they are Canadian, but have their servers in another country. Make sure you ask where the servers are located. It can make a difference in SEO.
Very true. There's a problem tho, with all english google sites, the problem is called Internet Explorer. I noticed that the quick search in internet explorer always goes to Google.com, while all search fields in different browsers (ie ff) redirect to google.co.uk, since this is my location. Now, people searching through Google.com might not find a certain website, which they would found without any problems on Google.co.uk. It's a SEO struggle for me too, to optimise UK websites to come up high in Google.com. This is a horrible problem, same for Google product search, there should be an option to search for products only in the United Kingdom or by shops located in the United Kingdom.
Thanks for the responses everyone, I forgot to mention an important point (my appologies)...the site is a .net and not a .ca. I know for sure that the web server is located in the U.S. Why would it rank higher in Canada and terribly in the U.S? The site has very few backlinks from .coms I don't think he has google webmasters tools configured, i'll have him check it out. Thanks