i was in show dealing with language issues and how search engines create listings for non-US sites. Google suggested that it's doing more to show different results to those outside the US, if you use non-US versions of Google. In other words, say you do a search at Google.com across the entire web, then use Google Germany to do the same search across the entire web. Traditionally, the results have been the same except for some possible minor variances. Today, Google implied that the Google Germany search would now be more skewed toward favoring German related sites -- even if you hadn't specifically used the filter to German sites option. In other words, nothing would be filtered, but because you are using the German site, those sites might get a preference. Google even implied that if you were to go to Google.com from outside the US, the results there might be more customized to your location, even when searching the entire web -- though likely to less degree than if you searched the entire web on Google Germany. I keep saying implied because they stopped short of saying they actually do this, phrasing things like "you can imagine that we might" or "it wouldn't be surprising if." Qualifications aside, it explains some increasing reports I've heard from others that searching the entire web via Google but from outside the US brings back different results. sam
the non-US versions of Google have been doing this for some time, though still to a less extent than if your clicked the local country filter button. And i suspect that even the .com version has begun to use ip tracking to skew results in favor of the searchers host country, again to a lesser degree than the country specific version of Google. Being in Canada I often switch between Google.com and Google.ca so I have seen this for some time now.
If you're going to c&p sources from all over the internet, at least give your sources the credit they deserve http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=60 (and this piece is from May 2004, so a probably a bit out of date)
This has been the case for a while now (it may be new to Germany), I know in my own experience from AU that going to google.com still gives geo-targeted results favoring AU sites over US. To see a truer representation of results on google.com I have to use a U.S. based proxy.
man, just checked that link. Why do these people cut and paste and then post to try to make it look like it was them that wrote it. Thats really lame, foolish, stupid. redness