"pages from the UK" results way higher than "the web"

[inertia]

Has anyone else noted Google UK results where "pages from the UK" results are way higher than "the web" results? This is becoming a proper pain in the rear as its making it hard for me to properly ascertain levels of competition for my SEO customers.

[dburdon]

Inertia,

it all depends on the market category. I work on sites where most of the competition is from .co.uk websites. The difference between "web" and "UK only" SERPs is quite small. In other categories, with many international dot.coms, the difference is quite marked.

As a rule of thumb Google results in the UK break down as follows:

Google.co.uk - Web 75%
Google.co.uk - UK only 15%
Google.com - 10%

[incrediblehelp]

Wouldnt you think a better experience for the end searcher would be co.uk websites when searching Google.co.uk?

[redspace]

Well doesn't it what the option should be. at least the dot uk has a chance to get top ranking.

[Webnauts]

I can't follow the discussion here. Are there two different optimization methods?

[Martinscholes]

What result would you expect from a UK search?

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

I can't follow the discussion here. Are there two different optimization methods?

Results from the web and country specific results generally are different from each other. That's because the competition is different and the whole web is considered in stead of just country specific websites.

In countries with other languages this isn't much of an issue, but in the uk it is an issue because the uk speaks the same language as the usa. (In case you´re from the uk, you´re probably don't agree with this but written language isn't so different.)

Has anyone else noted Google UK results where "pages from the UK" results are way higher than "the web" results? This is becoming a proper pain in the rear as its making it hard for me to properly ascertain levels of competition for my SEO customers.

I think you'll just have to learn to live with it. The uk is smaller and therefore is likely to have less websites and therefore you'll just have less PageRank than american sites. You can't do anything about that. One advantage is that people searching have the same problem as you have and it's not bad to assume that many people in the uk prefer the country specific search.

[IanBrodie]

I'm having thes ame issue and I think it's more complex than the answers seem to indicate.

Of course, results on "pages from the UK" should differ in that US based pages should rank less highly.

But in my case, the difference isn't really in the US sites.

What happens is that my site is #3 on the "Pages from the UK" version. When I select the "the web" version, my page is not in the top 1000 pages. But the pages that replace mine are not US based ones. The "Pages from the UK" and "the web" search list are pretty much the same sites - almost all are .co.uk sites. What happens is that they all jump up a couple of ranks and mine and one other one in the top 10 disappear completely.

So it's not a minor difference, or the introduction of .com sites. Somehow my site and 1 other are being ranked completely differently on the "the web" vs the "pages from the UK" list.

My site is new and I've been doing a lot of backlinking, so maybe the "the web" version has "sandboxing" and the "from the UK" doesn't.

FYI the search is for "business consultants manchester" on google UK and I'm the Lighthouse page.

Ian

[Webnauts]

Inertia, just curious? Have you setup in your Google Webmaster Tools your geographical target? And did you define your site language in your web documents or in your .htaccess file?

[glengara]

Reason might be found in the text-only version of the cache, may be worth having a look at the second site that also disappears from the "web search" results....

[activeco]

It looks like some penalty somehow not reflected in local search.

P.S.Check "cached text only". There is H1 & H2 text all over the place..

[activeco]

glengara #10, I am sorry, I didn't grasp your reply above. We basically said the same.

IanBrodie, it is actually abusive asking for help in cases where obvious search engine spamming is involved.



.

[IanBrodie]

activeco

Sorry if my post seemed abusive.

The "obvious" spamming is not so obvious to me I'm afraid. I paid someone to develop my site rather than doing it myself. All I know about good/bad web deisgn and SEO I've picked up from the web and a Dummies book in the last couple of weeks so my abilities are very basic.

That's the reason for checking on the forum. I was a bit suspicious as I found a huge list of local towns in the site which I have removed now. From looking at the cached text as glengara and you advised it seems there is a ton of text that doesn't actually appear visibly on the site which even I know is not a good thing.

Looks like I may have to go back to the drawing board (and have a not so quiet word with my web designer).

Thanks for the advice

Ian

[glengara]

"It looks like some penalty somehow not reflected in local search."

I've often wondered if the various filters are dialed down in the "Pages from..." results....

What about that other site Ian, did you check for anything dodgy?

[IanBrodie]

To be honest, I'm not sure if I would be able to detect anything dodgy.

I had a look a few times on my search but I think I may have been mistaken about the other site that dropped out of the rankings. I found one that droped 7 or 8 places so I may have thought that one was dissapearing, but it looks like in reality it was just dropping a bit.

Ian

[activeco]

Well you'll have to find someone with more integrity in doing your SEO design.

Most of your pages use keyword staffing or H1, H2 tags in inappropriate places.

E.g. this is how users see one of your pages;

And this is how Google sees it. Scroll all the way down.

[IanBrodie]

Ugh - that looks pretty ugly at the bottom there.

All that text seems to all be in one section so I will just delete all that for now from the html files (and hope I don't botch it up somehow).

Thanks for your help

Ian

[activeco]

Originally Posted by glengara

I've often wondered if the various filters are dialed down in the "Pages from..." results....

It looks like many other parameters exclude filters.
I noticed e.g. if you access google.com with one of their IP's directly, you get seemingly unfiltered results.
In this case: business consultants manchester - Google Search

[Peter (IMC)]

The only real difference between country search and the whole web search is the competition. However, that may be more complex than you'd think at first. It's not like the country search simply filters the sites from other countries out of the web results. There is a lot more to it.

Google's algorithms have a lot of variables that depend on the information they get out of their index. That means that a page can be within the limits in country search but outside the limits in the whole web search. Let me use a simplified example:

In a specific country a keyword can have an average PR of its selected pages of 3, an average backlink anchor text age of 3 months and your site can be close enough to those values to rank happilly in the top 10.

On the whole web that same keyword can have an average PR of its selected pages of 4, an average backlink anchor text age of 8 months and in this case your site is not within the limits and you´re ranking much lower or even not at all.

It's a whole different ball game when you compete with the whole world. The standards are not the same and unfortunately for the UK, the english language is spoken by more than 2 billion people. So competition in the whole web is pretty big.

[Webnauts]

Originally Posted by activeco

E.g. this is how users see one of your pages;

And this is how Google sees it. Scroll all the way down.

Who the hell could build such a site?

[IanBrodie]

Originally Posted by Webnauts

Who the hell could build such a site?

Yes, I know, I know. See the messages above.

Site should be clean now. With my basic html knowledge I was able to I delete all that text that came out in the text only version. The site itself seemed to remain the same.

Any chance of leaving me to wallow in my shame rather than keep resurrecting the thread?!?

Ian