I was responding to this post in the forum when I got the following response: Now, being quite an international type (I typically have around 40 international trips per year) and being involved in website internationalization for quite a long time, I knew this was not necessarily true. Since I know that a lot of people will attack me ferociously for stating such a thing, I've done an experiment. (After all, you may attack opinions, but facts are facts). I have taken the results of Google.com, Google Canada and Google Germany and compared them for one keyword. To show that there are no tricks (e.g., due to the language), I have used in all cases English as the search language, and to further bias the results towards a better match I selected English for the Google Canada results page (you can actually choose between French and English). Is the quoted statement true? Sorry chaps, but the answer is NO... so a #1 ranking in Google is worth less than what you guys might be thinking! Check out Why Your Google Ranking Might Be Worthless. Oh, and to convince the skeptics I've added the screenshots... Any comments?
I just did - same results for #1, #2 and #3 as for Germany. #4 in Germany becomes #5 in Austria and #5 in Germany does not appear on the first THREE pages of google.at. The new #4 in Austria appears at #9 in Google Germany. Note how funny this is - apart from the same language, both countries share a border. Though this explains the similarities for the first three, #5 in Germany (none less than Amazon!) does not appear on the first page in Austria! (actually it DOES appear, but only as Adsense advertising).
This is why it is so important to have your site hosted within your target market! I have a number of feeder sites hosted in different countries to capture the local market.
Thanks for sharing the results of your experiments! How many number of sites with regional tlds figured in the top ten, in the localised search... that were just not present in the .com search for the same keyword? Regards, RightMan
In Google Canada: 7 "non-localized" sites (meaning having a .com instead of a .ca TLD) on the first page. Of these, only 3 appeared on the first page of Google.com 3 "localized" (.ca TLD) sites on the first page. None of them appeared on google.com on the first page. The interesting thing is, that of the 7 non-localized sites, there are 3 .com sites that do NOT appear in google.com on the first page, but the three of them appear on the first page of google.ca. Two of the sites include the word "canada" in the domain name, so google has apparently geo-targeted them by the name. How the thirst one is identified as scoring well in Canada, I don't know - probably some local links or on-site SEO. In Google Germany: 6 "non-localized" sites (meaning having a .com instead of a .de TLD) on the first page. Of these, 5 appeared on the first page of Google.com 4 "localized" (.de TLD) sites on the first page. None of them appeared on google.com on the first page. Again, one of the .com sites did not appear in Google.com on the first page, but in this case it does not have anything in the domain that might relate it to Germany. Interesting, isn't it?
A website in .com TLD will rank well in Google.Com compare to other Google TLD like what you stated. Same thing with .ca TLD domain; they rank well in Google.Ca compare to Google.Com....
I have read the post you linked and found it has some good point and worth reading, worth for green rep as well. This change has been applied since last year but evidently in the beginning of this year. I have seen many results are changing based on localization and even a completely change for some certain country. The most I evidently on a big change is country using English as based language but not US itself. There are UK (Google.co.uk), Canada (Google.ca), Australia (Google.com.au), New Zealand (Google.co.nz) and India (Google.co.in). Other country results are effects with localization as well but only a little changed in my opinion. You would see this change in Google europe such as Hungary (Google.hu), Spain (Google.es), Belgium (Google.be), etc.
You are absolutely right, I also started noticing the change only around the beginning of the year. I have not tried comparing the different English-based sites (except .com and Canada), but it's evident that there are important changes. I did however check out two other same-language sites (Germany and Austria, see above) and it also showed significant differences. My biggest surprise was that Amazon.de (Amazon, for heaven's sake!) completely disappeared on the Austrian Google (google.at), even though both countries share the same language and a same border. The impression I get (though I have not made a statistical analysis on this, I would need a bigger sample) is that "country-neutral" sites might retain their exposure (though perhaps with a different ranking) on the first page, while "non-neutral" sites (identified by Google as belonging to a specific country) might simply drop off the radar chart in the local Google. We have known for long that things like telephone numbers or local ccTLD extensions gave Google already a hint about where a business is located. While this is good to target a specific market, until now I had not realized that it could actually also hurt your global rankings!
A very useful information! Thanks for sharing this! It all comes down to your geographical target audience and it is quite true that being in the #1 doesn't mean that you're most likely at the top of localised searches as well. It could also be because of the different trends per location that affects the results on different Googles based on the 'car' experiment. Say if you're have a US based business that deals car all around the US - being in the #1 for 'cars, car deals, etc..' would really be beneficial for you EVEN if you don't rank for other places i.e. in Germany. You don't do business there anyway so why worry if you don't rank there NOT unless you want traffic from other places! but hey! who doesn't want more traffic? lol
That is NOT the point - the point I highlighted is that even if you DO score #1 in google.com that does NOT mean you will score also as #1 in the local Googles... or even appear on their first page! Here it is not a matter of keyword scoring. A #1 in google.com is supposed to score for a specific keyword - but it does not necessarily score well in local sites! And we should not forget that users outside the US are usually redirected to *their* local Google automatically! I also wrote a post on this: How to get into the "other" Google.
You are absolutely right about the localization and the geographical target audience . I would like however to point out that the "cars" example is perhaps slightly biased, in the sense that selling cars is usually a local activity. So, as you are correctly pointing out, a car seller in the US could not care less about Germany (Though I assume that he should care about Canada, and there he has already this issue). But it becomes more problematic when you sell your services (say, affiliation products) world-wide. As Sxperm pointed out, this is something relatively new, and will change the rules of the game. For example, if properly done, one could establish some local niche sites that target a global product, scoring bad on the global Google, yet scoring #1 on a local google site...
Well it is going to be a very interesting mix of new things in Google in the next couple of months. Localised search may just be the 'new' craze. TRAVEL niches would really benefit BIG time with this! ohhhh.... exciting indeed.
Obviously the guy you quoted was meaning regional TLDs. What I noticed while experimenting with ccTLDs is that they get preference over IDNs in regional search. Since I am from India, I can experiment only with Indian ccTLDs.
Not so. I am in Spain and routinely try out other ccTLDs and other Google sites because by main job is localizing websites. I also have quite a few domains, including some ccTLDs. My ccTLDs rank quite well. But local targeting means that you need to verify the "local" Google of the market you are targeting. And YOUR location becomes irrelevant - Google does not look where YOU are based, but rather which market your domain targets. Now, you can buy (almost) any ccTLD domain you want, you are not restricted to .in. You can also access the other Google sites (including google.com) whenever you want. So you are certainly NOT restricted to India. YOU can also experiment with Google.com without being redirected automatically to google.co.in. Just check out another post I wrote about how to get into the other Googles. Do not think that because you are based in a certain country you are limited only to that country. Think big. Target other markets. Target the whole world if you want to. The tools are there. Just make sure you know how to exploit your endless possibilities. BTW, just so that you can see that I also have access to Google India, the top results for "cars" in google.co.in are: 1. www.cardekho.com 2. www.carwale.com 3. www.imdb.com/title/tt0317219/ Again, the top two results do NOT appear in Google.com, they are both pure Indian companies (Note: with a .com TLD, not a .in ccTLD)
Some sites, especially if they're selling products or advertising it -- will target a specific location, rather than every country.