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Google's dirty little secret

netlash.com — How localization of your server can cripple or double your search engine traffic.

Who dugg this? Made popular Sep 24, 2006

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42 Comments

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  • spinchange, on 10/12/2007, -3/+28I don't think I'd call this a "dirty little secret," but interesting nonetheless. Dugg.
  • daborg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+20I would digg this, except the title is misleading. This is not a "dirty little secret".
  • geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12Not only is the title misleading, the article was posted in the Apple section.

    way to go submitter.
  • gvibe06, on 10/12/2007, -6/+13This guy is a moron. Of course google is going to index and localize sites by country ... Why would someone in Belgium want to order a pizza from New York?

    not dugg because if I do, my IQ will go down!
  • johneffort, on 06/06/2008, -1/+7Don't really get the negative responses here.

    There is a website with:
    - A Dutch .nl address
    - Dutch content
    - a 'Dutch' IP address since it is hosted in Amsterdam

    The site gets moved to a belgium server. It still has:
    - A Dutch .nl Address
    - Dutch content
    - but now a 'Belgium' IP address since it is hosted in Belgium.

    The only thing that changes: the IP adress. And, strangely: All Dutch googlers cannot find the site anymore...

    Basically this means that google doesn't only filter on TLD or content, but also on server IP address. The way they do it now is a little too extreme considering the consequences of the given example.

    So this has NOTHING to do with TLD or Content language. It's just extremely unfair for foreign hosted websites.
  • johneffort, on 06/06/2008, -0/+5Since the only thing that changed was the IP address one can logically conclude that it does have something to do with the IP address. Your own example cannot refute the facts that the article's example gives.
  • Archos, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5Nice finding. But for the convience of other people, put the 'Case Study' at the top of your article, as I thought you were just saying something without knowledge.
  • SimonDonkers, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I've been listening to webmaster radio and on a recent episode hosted by a Google staff member they explained this. It's based on the server IP and it's not a secret. Basically they try to get the most related sites for somebody and for a person in the Netherlands sites from the Netherlands are the most interesting. When I search for 'car sale' in the Netherlands I want to get Dutch car shops and not Belgium car shops.
    Listen to the show for yourself at:
    http://www.webmasterradio.fm/episodes/index.php?showId=35

    This isn't a secret and I don't see how this is dirty behaviour.
  • joshjoneswas, on 10/12/2007, -2/+5@spinchange: I agree. Since when did this become news? Pretty darn obvious. I think we talked about this circa 1999 or so.

    @radu79: That's because the relevance of the mmorpg search still trumps the location.

  • radu79, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yes, but in this context the results were affected by the location. Searching from France gave a lower rank, while searching from the US gave a higher rank
  • crzdmn, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I almost forgot to mention that the searchers ip address DOES matter to google. They adjust their results to be more relavent based upon the general location of you IP Address.

    Someone coming from a french domain will without a doubt get more .fr results than someone coming from a US domain
  • rnelsonee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Who didn't know this? Searching "beer" at google.de gives you a different result than when searching for "beer" at google.com. Google wants to provide end users with the most relevant results. And if you're German, you're probably much happier at www.beir.de (a nice portal site), than the useless www.beer.com, which is intended for Americans. Likewise, if you're American, beer.com is still better than beir.de, since you probably don't speak German.
  • Mambo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1I know I would be quite mad if I kept getting results for websites that I couldn't read, even if they are the best source of what I am looking for.
  • JorgeGT, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1*Wrong topic*
  • tylerni7, on 10/12/2007, -2/+3Well this is why you should just pick something unique that no one else will have. That way, when they search for whatever it is you do, you'll be more likely to come up first...
  • aaronwall, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2from the article
    "Sites can not be localized by Google based on TLD (Top Level Domain)."
    nice facts, and idiotic conclusions.

    some factors that could potentially affect localization
    - domain extension
    - hosting location
    - usage data
    - the location of sites which link to your site (ie: if sites which have a high probablility of being related one country link to your site you get a boost there. see this post http://www.seomoz.org/blogdetail.php?ID=1214 )
  • montagg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Looks to me like this is more of a service than a "dirty little secret." If it is accurate, that's good. I imagine that if Google didn't segment relevence by region, and I didn't live in the US, I'd probably be getting a lot of US sites and never use Google.

    Also, the article's author also doesn't offer the hypothesis that Google may just analyze the content of a web page to determine where it's located, or (more importantly) who would want to read it. (For example, if I site is in German, people using German Google would like to read it moreso than someone using US Google.)
  • tibe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Your information is more than likely out of date.

    The hosting servers geographical location based on IP is directly linked to its localised page rank.

    As far as I can tell TLD, detected page language, meta tags, and server IP are all taken into account. Google are famous for their algorithms, this one seems to be more complex than most people appreciate.
  • tibe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This same post by moonwell.. in not so painful English, with some other corrections.

    The poster believes Google has performed this way since its inception... The poster belevies it can really suck because when you search something, google.com redirects you to your home countries Google page i.e. google.nl, and usually you want to get the results that google.com would give you. The poster would really appreciate if Google changed their alorithm to more fairly localise sites.
    As the poster noticed, if you use tabbed Google page using different Google.com TLD you get the English results first. He makes note that another solution is to use a proxy from the USA, or just get used to it.. unfortunalty. :(
  • tibe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Do you work for Google do you?

    Do you not think there might be more than just one criteria, i.e. more than just the detected page language is taken into consideration? Maybe IP has a lower weighting than the detected language in the algorithm. I think your wrong.
  • jacks0n, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1well, duh. of course.

    It's primarily for business searching. if you type in "computer store", the probability of finding one in your area based on your ip is higher than others. this seems logical..

    it just becomes a problem when you're searching something where location is redundant.

    ps. why is the topic apple...?
  • inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1This is the behaviour of google since it exist... It can be sucks because when you search something, google.com redirect to your home countires google page eg google.nl and usually you want to get the results what google.com would give you. Google really need to fix this redirect crap, but as I noticed if you use tabbed google page you get the english results first, another solution use proxy from the usa or get use to it :(
  • tibe, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Are you American?

    This makes a huge difference for sites hosted outside of their own country due to bandwidth expense. It is quite important and was never really announced by Google, there is little to no information about this in official channels for webmasters from Google however it affects localised page rank quite significantly.
  • johneffort, on 06/06/2008, -0/+1From the link that the google employee posted:

    "If you feel that we're incorrectly detecting the location of your site, please send us your site's IP address and the physical location at which it's hosted."
  • wedgemartin, on 11/14/2007, -0/+1Word.
  • OsakaWilson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1We should be able to control these things in the settings. Do we want local or global results? Do we want our search history to effect the results? Will commercial results be included? The search engine should not be deciding this--the user should.
  • tibe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1What if you don't want your site to be about the unique 'flying squirrel monkeys' ? i.e. Something that is worth something.
  • ludwik, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Google doesn't care about IP. It detects page language. Inaccurate.
  • yeffetn, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0True, some announce foreign IP addresses in the US just because of google...
  • SirKnumSkull, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Actually, as a French user that frequently searches for english websites, there is a very simple workaround to this : just change the language for Google in your settings.
    This is how Google determines which results to give you.
    I set language to French, I find french websites on top even with an english keyword.
    Change language to English, I now find different results, with more relevant english websites on top.

    This "feature" is actually pretty annoying when as someone said, you're not looking for things in your language. But it can be pretty easily changed, so no harm done there.
  • nima82, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I think the results could be flawed. One other thing to keep in mind is that google tries to customize the results according to the user's search history. I mean if most of your searches have to do with lets say Belgian contents, why shoud you get search results for an Asian webite. What do you poeple think?
  • radu79, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3I am not sure how accurate that is.
    Our web server was located in the US until a few weeks ago. Now we moved it in France.
    If you search for "free mmorpg" from an US ip, our site comes in the first 20. If you search from a French ip, it will not come in the first 20.
  • koh777, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I'm not sure about the site indexing that google uses but i am aware that they use an individual user cookie to track what you have searched and provide more related results to what you normally search for.

    so its feasable that if someone didnt delete thier cookies normally could get different results than someone who started off without that data.
  • greatcaffeine, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3My thoughts exactly.
  • berberrama, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1What's so "dirty" about this? If I'm looking for something and I'm in Germany, then I want sites from Germany. Giving me sites in Australia would not be the most relavent. This is what search results are supposed to do... Give you sites relative to you and your search terms!
    Your title wins the "Pull my Finger Award". Here... Pull my finger...
  • cormster, on 10/12/2007, -3/+2FTFA: CONCLUSION "Location of your website's server can make or break your search engine traffic. Especially if you're depending on local traffic."

    Not true. You can buy a .nl or .be TLD etc and come top of the results for that country if you host in the US (or anywhere).

  • crzdmn, on 10/12/2007, -4/+2Ok, people it has nothing to do with the location the site is hosted in. It has to do with the domain extension.

    If a site has a .fr extension it gets indexed in the french google results, where a .com,.net,.edu etc. get indexed into the us results. Another thing that can drastically affect the different locations your site is indexed under are the content-type meta tag on the pages.

    I'm not saying you can't get a .fr site indexed in the us google index. But it is harder, and you lose site ranking because of it, this works the other way too.

    This is first hand knowledge that comes from rolling enterprise level sites out across multiple countries in multiple languages.

    *tylerni7*
    Unique helps, but good webcontent is far more beneficial combined with back linking between other related content rich sites.
  • kaediem, on 10/12/2007, -6/+3Interesting. Something to think about especially if you use free hosting!
  • SirKnumSkull, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0Damn double post bury me >
  • MenthiX, on 10/12/2007, -5/+2Inaccurate.

    Article claims Google indexes site-language by server IP. This can't be true since I have a Dutch site on a USA server/IP which is indexed as a Dutch site by Google.

    I'm not sure either what Google DOES use to index site-language. I have set Dutch in meta tags and a .nl domain.
  • chrismm, on 10/12/2007, -7/+1OH NOES LARGE INTERNET COMPANY SEGMENTS ITS NETWORK, NEWS @ 11.

  • drpeppper, on 10/12/2007, -9/+1the ***** "inaccurate" option is to classify the story, not the ***** title. god ***** damn!

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