Too clever by half
I have posted the following on a couple of threads in the hope of generating a response - even if it's only "you're talking bulldust". What's worse than being told you are an idiot? Not getting feed back at all.
"Have the changes made by Google gone too far?
Previously, a client of ours, a home improvement business based in and serving this city was listed number one for the search: home extensions sydney
The other top results were relevant too.
Now the results (on both .com and .com.au) are either for wierd internet directories and totally irrelevant results.
It seems that our client is being penalised for having the words "extensions", "Sydney" and "home" incorporated in their site text etc.
If people can't get relevant results from their searches (even the Ad Words on the results page are a bit wonky) they will vote with their feet... errr mouses"
But getting back to the topic, it seems to me that the location of the server has little to do with the search results.
There does seem to be some bias in their .au SE (google.com.au)when you check the "pages from Australia? box but only for .au domains rather than the location of the server.
This has always seemed to me a failing by some one to understand the internationalism and ubitquity of the internet. .com and the other .gTLD domains were never intended just for US businesses.
Most Australian businesses who are on the net don't want to be invisible to international searches which they would be on some SEs if they had just a .au domain name. So they are forced to register at some expense a .au and gTLD domaiun name. Given that simple aliasing is not sufficeint to get listings for both domain names on the one server, should they be then forced to even more expense to develop two totally unique sites just to avoid being penalised for duplication?
As an aside the results on google.com.au for "pages from Australia" are often risible.
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