"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)]

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....