I have noticed that when searching for local content on Google.ca, one gets different results than when searching with the same criteria on Google.com. Are different page rank algorithims being employed, one to satisfy Canadians and one for the rest of the world? Does Google.ca give preference to .ca sites? What gives? Does anyone know?
Definitely yes. Here's a quick test. Type something from a foreign language into both Google.com and Google.fr (or whatever country for which you know a couple words). In my test, I typed: "voulez vous" ('would you like' in french) In the U.S. google, a whole bunch of U.S. and English sites came up in the top 10. The french site had some english sites, but a bunch of french (.fr) sites as well. For some terms, the difference is immense. For example, my name (Anita) references my site as #2 or so in the Google results. In other languages its often not even on the first page. Make sense ... seems like users would expect some degree of localization. Best, Anita