Spot the difference with Google.co.uk

[dburdon]

One of the sites I monitor is having a real roller coaster ride with Google.co.uk. The site is a dot.com but is hosted in the UK.

One day the site magically appears at the top of the rankings for a number of terms and then a few days later it drops 20 or 30 places for some terms and appears to drop from the index altogether for others.

I've managed to pin the problem down. Some days the index page is included in the Google.co.uk index and others it excluded. Today's "site" search shows the index page in Google.co.uk "web" but excluded from "pages from the UK".

Spot the difference. As at 21st November "web" shows 48 pages in the Google.co.uk index. But "pages from the Uk" only 47. The missing page suffering UK exclusion is the index page:

The Web

Pages from the UK

Why should the index page be the only page to suffer expulsion?

[spiceboy]

dburdon, yeah I know. Check this out http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3051237.htm

then check this out

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic...=69592&start=0

It would be good if someone knew WHY this is happening?

[dburdon]

Spiceboy,

strangely enough the index pages of the sites I'm tracking tend to reappear in the "uk only" index on Fridays!! Seems crazy I know.

I'll run a couple of graphics to demonstrates.

[incrediblehelp]

Just to be sure this is happening to those with .co.uk TLD's to right?

[spiceboy]

Well I am a .com domain but hosted in the UK and have been for 4 years.

I dont think its a domain issue though as the rest of the pages show where they should be when "uk only" is selected.

.co.uk pages have started to appear at the top of the listings when "uk only" is selected even with lower PR than me (I am the first .com site to appear after these for "indian food"). Until a month or so ago I was always No1 for this term.

Now the page just isnt indexed exactly as dburdon says when the radio button is selected.

[spiceboy]

sorry... to clarify above, even though I am showing on Google Uk when "uk only" is selected it is NOT my home page that is showing, its a secondary page with lower PR.

[jimkelly7777]

Man, just when you thought you had Google figured out...

This is really frightening stuff because all our business comes from the UK and Ireland.

I hope you can work this out. Why would everything be listed but the index? In my heart of hearts I can't believe Google really intends to do this.

Then when you throw in the Friday element it really gets scary.

Hopefully this is just one of those growing pains they periodically seem to experience. How big is the universe these days, anyway?

[ornamentlady]

We're Canadian and experience the same problem. We are a dot com, hosted in Canada. In Google.ca, all is essentially well but if the "pages from Canada" box is ticked our home page is nowhere to be found. Under google.ca, we show as having 151 pages indexed. Under google.ca, "pages from Canada", we have 150 pages and the index page is missing.

Margaret

[Purple13]

Hi - I posted the entry below just the other day after experiencing the same thing with a uk company having a .com url. We've now registered a .co.uk for him and are busy site map building and submitting it on his behalf.

Webnaut suggested a few good ideas including an <address> tag. Too early to tell but it may just help.

....Hi Guys - I know this has been discussed before but any help appreciated.

Our client has a .com url (although based in UK) and recently we did some optimisation to get him further up the organic listings - so far so good - he's first page for 'double glazing Berkshire' (as he wanted to be). Second page on 'double glazing'.

Trouble is, I feel he may be missing out on local search traffic if they are specifying 'pages from UK' as he comes nowhere when that Google option is selected.

I've registered the .co.uk variant of his domain but how best to implement it?

I'm worried by simply transferring everything onto this that it will be treated like a new domain by Google and loose position rank - heaven forbid it should be sand-boxed (which i quite expect).

However, simply copying everything over to the .co.uk and leaving the .com still running seems equally foolhardy - duplication of content etc.

Am I worrying about nothing here or is there a minimal damage strategy to follow?

The ultimate aim is to get his .co.uk url on the first page of the 'pages from the UK' results like its .com cousin on 'the web' results and eventually fade out the .com altogether as it hardly seems relevant - apart from his office stationery

Thanks for any comments or help......

Jonathan - Purple 13

[dburdon]

Purple13,

interesting post. I'd also read the Webnauts post. I already use the <address> tag and have the business listed with Google maps and Google local.

Seems the common thread is the absence of the index (home) page from the "sites from the UK" index.

This is a much wider problem. See the post above by ornamentlady regarding google.ca.

[spiceboy]

Got some interesting developments. My home page is back up on "uk only" results where it usually is - No 1/2 for all key phrases. This happened this morning. The page was recached on 18 but this has only shown today in cache: searches

Indexed pages for Google Uk and "uk only" are exactly the same.

I only made three chages since the last cache:

1 I added a few UK references in the page text.

2 I changed <html> to <html lang="en-GB"> as suggested by webnaughts in another thread.

3 I discovered 3 other pages had the same title tag as my home page (generated by software) I have changed this so the home page now has its unique title tag.

4 I added UK references to the meta description tag.

Interestingly this is now showing whereas before the DMOZ description was being used.

Not sure which if anything did the trick or if its permanent - watch this space.

[spiceboy]

....err sorry that's four changes isn't it.

[dburdon]

Spiceboy,

I'll experiment with the language tag.

[Martin Smith]

A couple of points that nobody has mentioned yet.

1. I wonder if this is anything to do with the tld of the nameservers for this domain and the one in the other recent thread (both .net) on this topic. I would think that this is unlikely as although both are a .net tld, the IPs are located in the UK. However I know of a .com domain hosted in the UK with .co.uk nameservers that consistently does better in G.co.uk than G.com.

2. I am suprised that nobody has mentioned the possible significance of links from UK based sites. What proportion of inbounds to the sites in question are from UK tld / hosted sites?

[dburdon]

Martin,

thanks for the advice. However, why should it be just the index (home) page that is excluded from the "Sites from the UK" index?

Even the British Airways page fails to appear:
Site:BA.com

However, for Easyjet.com the story is entirely different. Not only has their index page been a rock solid feature of the "sites from the UK only", but their pages in Danish and French also. So its not a language issue:

Site:Easyjet.com

[spiceboy]

I dont think its a UK text on page issue either. My home page is littered with references to "Indian" "India" etc so if it was surely I would rank highly on .co.in - which I dont of course.

[ornamentlady]

As I posted earlier, we have the same problem with google.ca. I just checked three unrelated sites that are all Canadian and dot.com. They (a nursery, a book store and a craft type store) all have the same problem. They are fine on google.ca but their index pages are missing in "pages from Canada".

Margaret

[dburdon]

Margaret,

do you have any examples of Canadian dot.coms that aren't excluded from the "Candada only" index?

[ornamentlady]

dburdon,

The site www.growercentral.com has their index page in the "Canada only pages". In google.ca they have 2520 pages. In the "Canada only pages", they only show as having 1150. Strangely they managed to retain their index page but appear to have lost half their other pages.

I will try and do some digging and comparisons later today and see if I can find the differences.

[dburdon]

Margaret,

excellent work!

I notice that the description meta tag of Growercentral includes the words "Western Canada".

When I check BA.com I notice that there is no UK reference in the description tag. But voila, easyjet.com does. BA.com is excluded from "UK only" and easyjet isn't.

Could including a host country reference in the description meta tag be the solution? I notice there is no reference to Canada in the Tree Treasures description. I suggest you give it a try.

[ornamentlady]

dburdon,

Congratulations, think you found the solution. Hopefully including a host country reference in the description will solve the problems. I have put Canada in our description. However, Google uses our DMOZ description so I doubt it will work for us now. I will be put the NOODP tag in in January and see what happens. At present we have good positioning and steady sales and our busiest time is the three weeks after US Thanksgiving. I'm paranoid about making any changes right now.

[dburdon]

Margaret,

no guarantees. But it could be the missing link.

[spiceboy]

ornamentlady, please note my post above - it may have been what worked for me but I also noted that prior to adding the UK reference to the meta description tag the DMOZ description was showing for the home page - since I have added the UK reference my description tag is now showing. Been stable for 2 days now - whoopeee!

[Webnauts]

Dburbon,

replace on your pages this <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en"> with this <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en-gb" xml:lang="en-gb">

2. Add your physical postal address within the <address> tags.

3. Repair your title and meta tags. You can get my advises here: http://www.seoworkers.com/search-eng.../analyzer.html

4. Try to increase the content of your index page up to a minimum of 400 words.

5. Avoid using a dangerous contrast between you background and foreground colors at the top of your page.

6. About the notes above adding your adding your city, country and co. in your description meta tag, it will not make sense, if it is not found in the text of your document body. But you already do, but as mentioned above, have it in the address tag.

7. Try to get some IBLs from sites with uk domains, or at least hosted in the UK.

8. Your title tag looks like this: The George In Rye Hotel | Hotels Restaurant Wedding. I would suggest you to keep only one word, hotel or hotels, not both.
Maybe something like this:

"George In Rye Hotel &amp; Restaurant Wedding in Essex, UK" or something like that.

9. Change your header <div id="seo">Rye Hotels | Weddings Restaurant</div> to <h1 id="seo">Rye Hotels | Weddings Restaurant</h1>

10. Optionally you may add a P3P Policy on your site.

Do me a favor and try my tips. I am sure you will see a difference.

[dburdon]

Webnauts,

many thanks for your tips. The site you refer to The George in Rye is a hotel that utilises a proprietary content management system. This comes out of a box with a number of constraints. It's fairly typical of CMS based sites in the travel industry in that it uses a wysiwyg editor. Changing the code requires going back to the template designers and requesting changes that they insist are unnecessary. Its easier to work around the constraints.

I tried your meta tag tool. And interestingly - just like a similar tool, Widexl - the site's meta tags fail to register properly. Although they are being picked up by Google.

The copy has just been expanded but the client wants to retain the minimalist feel. So 400 words is out of the question.

[dburdon]

Just seen the new Google cache. Google.co.uk is still excluding UK hosted dot.coms from the "Sites from the UK" index. I've found that the "lang = en-gb" still doesn't solve the problem.

[ornamentlady]

It worked for us! Thank you, thank you dburdon and spiceboy. We added "Canada" to our meta tag description. Even though Google uses our DMOZ description, which doesn't include the word Canada, we are now number one in "pages from Canada". Previously our index page was nowhere to be found in the "pages from Canada". I don't know if it helps or not but adding Canada to our description was the only change we made to our index page that would affect our showing.

[dburdon]

Ornament Lady,

well done. I'll take a look at your meta tags. I've added UK. I'm looking after several UK hosted dot.coms in a similar position.

I'll see how it goes.

[dviney]

Here is an interesting additional example of the problem:

http://www.uk-wedding-directory.com

Homepage ranks #4 on "web" google.co.uk results and nowhere on "UK only" for search "uk wedding directory".

Site is hosted by 1and1.co.uk (servers in Germany) but 99% of all 2000 links are from UK wedding businesses.

> has a Google local listing
> has an ICBM tag
> has UK in title & metadesc tags

will try some of the other suggestions but doubting it will make a difference.

Don't you all think this is something we should put to Matt Cuts? Why couldn't Google add a "set your target country" checkbox in Google webmaster tools or - alternatively - respect a Google local location (which after all is address-verified by snail-mail)? Ok, now who is brave enough to pop him the question?

By the way, have you noticed if you search on Yahoo with UK in the search string, you sometimes get served Yahoo! local results (so if you are based in North Yorkshire, you do rather well!) With Google, of course, its Chester.. what;s that all about?

Might be a business doing virtual offices for dotcoms somewhere half way between the two!

Rgds,
D.

[ornamentlady]

I don't spend as much time as I would like on the forum so my apologies if this post doesn't make any sense. Our index page, which has only recently been included in "pages from Canada" on google.ca, has the date of 27 Nov 2006 beside the listing. I am under the impression that if there is date beside a result, it means it is a new page, recently found by google.

Under google.com, there is no date beside our listing. It is the same page, crawled the same time. I have no idea whether the date on the .ca versus no date on .com would have any significance to the issue at hand.

[spiceboy]

Just an update. We survived the latest cache and are in the (expected) top positions for established keywords - still. So it looks as if this might be a stable position for the homepage on "uk pages only" searches.

However, other pages in the site have slipped a bit in SERPs in "UK only" searches so I have added the language tag to those pages but NOT added UK to the meta description tags. I will wait until the next cache and see if it makes a difference, if not, I will add UK to the meta tags as well and see what happens. That should give us an indication as to whether its the meta description tags thats done it or not. Will keep you posted

[ornamentlady]

Well, back to square one. Our index page lasted 2 days. We're back to having 169 pages on google.ca (and google.com). On google.ca, pages from Canada, we have 168 pages and the index page is missing.

[dviney]

As in Alice in Wonderland, it gets curiouser and curiouser.

Have done a proper bit of research recently on the UK Wedding Directory site I mentioned earlier. Remember the site is hosted with 1and1.co.uk but servers are in Germany. This is what I found:

Try a search for “wedding directory” on Google.co.uk and Google.de. These are the position results for uk-wedding-directory.com:

On google.de I have position #1 on “Seiten aus Deutschland”:

http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=...cr%3DcountryDE

This is despite that fact that NONE of the links to the site are from German-based sites

On google.co.uk I am in position #73 on the regular web search and nowhere in “Pages from the UK”:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wed...&start=70&sa=N

Despite the fact that 99% of my 2,000 inbound links are from UK-based sites.

Pretty conclusive evidence in my view that (1) Google recognises my site as German, (2) Google does not think my site is from UK, (3) I am suffering as a result.

I am now in discussions with 1and1 to see if I can either (a) set up an IP relay on my domain so it 'comes from the UK' or (b) move my site hosting to a UK-based data centre.

The latter may well mean a number of configuration changes to my PERL and PHP scripts but hey - I can't see any alternative.

Rgds,
D>

[Webnauts]

If you would try what I posted in the previous page of this thread, you sure would see a huge difference.

Just my two cents.

[dburdon]

Dviney,

follow Webnauts advice plus get hosted in UK.

[dviney]

Thanks guys - but (no disrespect webnauts) I am quite sure it is the physical location of the host that is the sole issue here.

Your main advice was around language - but on google.de you can search for sites in German (Seiten auf Deutsch) and separately sites from Germany (Seiten aus Deutschland).

UK Wedding Directory is nowwhere on the former (so Google recognises is in English) but #1 on latter (so thinks it is a German site). Only obviously affects my .com sites but may also have a slight affect on .co.uk sites too (but just less marked).

The reason I find this so interesting is that 1and1 are one of the biggest hosting providers in the world (if not the biggest). This issue must be affecting literally thousands of sites (probably without them being aware of it).

RGds,
D.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by dviney

Your main advice was around language

I think you missed something there. I wrote:

- Add your physical postal address within the <address> tags.

If you are about semantics and machines, you will understand why.

See this example, and you might will figure something out there: http://www.w3.org/2005/08/online_xsl...t-semantic.xsl

To be more specific, think about Trust Rank.

[dviney]

oh ok webnauts - missed your point there.

have implemented the address tag - guess we'll see what happens. Do you have any hard evidence this makes a difference (e.g. a site where this was the only thing done)?

I'd love it if so, as moving the site to a different web host would be a nightmare - but I also can't afford to wait months to test something that may not work.

Many thanks for your help.

D.

[Webnauts]

There are two members here at WPW who tried that and they said it work. It was about the .com and co.uk troubles, but I cannot remember who they were though.

But anyway, alone for the Trust Rank issue, it is worth to implement. If you can try and wait a couple weeks I think you will see what is going on.

[dburdon]

Dviney,

1.The address tag works extremely well if used in conjunction with Google maps.

2. However, your dot.com will still have to be relocated to a UK hosting company. I can recommend one that offers price and performance not so different from 1&1. The process including paperwork takes about 5 days. I'd recommend you leave until post-New Year.

[Webnauts]

My client here in Germany http://www.nobila.de had success in local search my advise to use an XMDP file.

It took a while until it brought the expected results, but after all it did!