Hi all, I find this interesting. i run a UK based service site which has been running about a year. However i have only been optimising for about 7 weeks. (bare with me admin, this is google specific!) i am clearly targeting the UK market, i my short time in SEO i have managed to get my site to #13 and #14 for my two main search terms in google.com (great but no good to me ) but for the same search on google.co.uk i only rank at #66 and #170 !. Where this gets interesting i if i do a UK only search on google.co.uk but them edit the address bar to google.com (so i am searching the .com database using the UK filter) i display at #1 and #2 for my two terms!! The search on both return 148,000 results so it looks like it's using the same 'data set so why the huge difference in serp position? Do any of you experienced SEO's have any idea how the two google interact etc and why my results would be so different? Cheers Lapos
If you have a google webmaster account (which I hope you do) you can set the geographic target. Dashboard > Tools > Set geographic target
Hi Devilfish, yes i have a webmaster account but didn't know you can set target. maybe this will help. the thing is google recognises I'm a UK based site so by changing it in webmaster tools would this actually aid my UK results or just hinder non UK results? Thanks Lapos
Having the same problem, I own a .com that ranks Page 1, Top 8 for Google.com, but ranks Page 24 on google.co.uk and my main market is the UK. I have changed my target on Webmaster tools months ago, Maybe it's because i'm hosted in the USA with a US hosting company. Would love to see my site rank in UK, but in the future, i'm going to simply buy .co.uk as a domain, it's the best way to rank in the UK.
As devilfish has said, set the geographic target in Google Webmaster Tools and wait for Google to do it's stuff. See www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=62399 I'm based in the UK, but have sites in Australia, USA and UK. All correctly listed in google.com.au, google.com and google.co.uk as expected. Jon
You need to get links from co.uk sites and sites targeting UK market - I have been through this, but still my rankings for .com are better
Hi Leswoody, One thing i do know for sure is that if you have a .com AND your hosted in the USA, you will struggle in the UK. i would suggest changing to a UK host to be the easiest option. This should upset your backlinks or google. Anyway, back to my issue, if there are any USA based users feeling charitable, i need a quick favour, i need someone to key in my search term in google.com to see if the results differ when searched from a USA IP address. Any takers?
Hi Watchdog, i know where your coming from, but if i go to google.com and select UK region in advanced search, i then rank #1 for my search term based on UK results. it even returns the exact same number of results as google.co.uk (148,000) which would imply to me that its using the same data set???????????
UK hosting, .co.uk backlinks and use lots of UK in your onsite content throughout the site. Worked for me.
Thanks for all your feedback. Would you say .co.uk is really important, even though i've selected my target region (UK) in webmaster tools?