Confused about Google country searches

suppose i am in india and search on google.com, google.co.in and google.co.uk then are the following statements true or false:

1): google.com will take data from global database
2): google.co.in will take data from india
3): google.co.uk will take data from UK

will all the three return the different result for same query?

and what's mean by search () the web or Page from Uk when searching in google.co.uk

pls clear the confusion.

Good question Smith

Google.com will fetch data which is more suitable for the Global but more targeted US searchers.

google.co.in will fetch data which is more suitable for the Indian searchers

and the same with Google.co.uk

Domain hosting location, Link portfolio and TLD all contribute to these results.

You are likely to see slight difference among the results of these 3 and others like Google.com.au; Google.com.hk etc etc

The option "search only pages from India/ UK" will restrict search results to all those sites who are hosted on UK/ Indian servers.

or sites with a .uk/.in tld (usually)

Google.co.uk contains all sorts of TLD's. I think geographic location of server and the geographic location of inbound links are of much higher importance than the tld.

We're talking UK only.

When you choose the country-specific filter you will only ever get sites hosted in the UK or with a UK tld.

E.g.
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=seo&meta=cr%3DcountryUK%7CcountryGB

Don't disagree with you.. what I am suggesting though is that as long as you host in the UK and have lots of UK based links it will matter much less (if at all) what TLD you use.

If i was targeting the UK i'd much prefer to host in the UK and have a non-uk TLD instead of having a UK TLD and hosting abroad.

This isn't Yahoo! we're talking about here, it's Google. The #1 result in the example justsearchltd gave for a search on SEO (Quite a competitive term really) was a .co.uk TLD hosted in the USA.

It matters not which way round you do it: .co.uk hosted outside the UK or a .com hosted in the UK, they will both rank fine. The rest is up to your SEO skills.

The truth of the matter is that they made it more difficult for themselves by hosting in the US. It is not impossible to rank in a regional google hosting abroad with a local TLD.. but its easier if you are based in the same region as the google version.

<snip> I've given an example of a site that ranks #1 in Google.co.uk for an extremely competitive term and is hosted in the US. I could give more examples, and explain the reasons why this is so <snip>

If you look carefully you will see that we aren't actually disagreeing..

- I am saying that hosting location is a factor in Google determining where it places a site in regional listings. This is pretty universally accepted by most SEO's.

- I am NOT saying that you cannot be listed in a regional Google if you are hosted outside of that region.

- You are saying that it is possible to rank in a regional Google without being hosted there .. and I agree with you.

Possibly the only thing you might be disagreeing with me on is the following hypothetical case study:

"Site A and Site B have exactly the same content, backlinks (in terms of source and age), same TLD (a .co.uk) and same domain age, in fact exactly the same everything.. apart from the fact that one is hosted in the UK and one is hosted in the US. In this case where everything else is *exactly* equal then Google.co.uk would rank the UK hosted site over the US hosted site for a search term"

I and most others would agree the above statement is true. And we've had this conversation many times on here.

That's a hypothetical situation, one that would never happen. If it did, one site would be penalised for duplicate content.

You said:



Which is untrue. Google does not place importance over the geographical location of IBLs compared with the TLD or hosting location. What I have said, quite clearly and accurately is that you do not need to be hosted in the UK to rank in a UK search. having a .co.uk TLD or being hosted in the UK are of equal significance to your rankings.

Yahoo! for example works more on geographical location of links, the #1 result in Yahoo.co.uk for the search term 'Transformers' is a .net hosted in Germany. Many of its links however are from the UK.

I was always under the impression that while the hosting location is a factor, the most important factor was the location of the backlinks to your site and the relevance of your content to the query. Thus, it is entirely possible for a site to have a .com TLD and be hosted in the States to still rank higher for competive keywords on .co.uk then competing .co.uk sites if the backlinks are better and the content is more relevant

I want to add nother dimension to the already complex discussion:

I am convinced (!) that competitiveness of a search term is not equal accorss the board.

Say "Cricket" for example would be a much more competitive term in the indian SERPs than in the U.S. SERPs. Now in order to rank well on a competitive term, it is mainly trust that matters these days with google, not so much the mere link juice issues.

So a relatively new site with loads of catalogue and paid links might rank pretty well on google.com for the term Cricket, while it would be very (!) tough for the same site to rank well in the Indian SERP, no matter where the actual hosting, or TLD or links come from.

My 2 cts (YES YES YES give me the rep)

Hello Guys,

Sorry for not replying sooner, the time zone difference and my ISP didn't allow me to.

This thread is becoming funny - Channel5 and JakeCop are repeating the same thing over and over again.

Let me make this thing very clear. For regional ranking on Google, the following things matter, arranged in the order of their importance.

* Backlink Portfolio (A .com domain can rank high on .pk if it has strong backlinks from .pk sites or sites hosted on Pak servers)

* Hosting location

* TLD

Having said these, Google will rank any TLD hosted anywhere on earth on a regional search of Google, which has strong backlinks from that region.

A .com domain can rank #1 in .com.au or .com.hk if it has strong .com.au or .com.hk backlinks.

You may ask me why...????

Well, a lot of .com.au links will indicate that Australian websites endorse and vouch for that website and the website gets the regional power in terms of links.

Doesn't it make sense for Google to rank that website high on Google.com.au - DEFINITELY

Now, did those .com.au sites link to that domain seeing its hosting location or TLD ???? NO

Does that site needs to be hosted on AU servers - Not necessarily.

The .com.au links did the trick.

So does that mean that TLD and Hosting location does not matter - of course it matters.

But the prime thing are the links. The hosting location and the TLD adds up to the relevance of a domain to a regional search engine, that's an advantage, not a mandatory thing.

I have always been a fan of the Australian Cricket Team, The Sydney Opera and of course the kangaroos