Getting Good Placement in Google
There are definitely times when I seriously envy those web designers who only have to think about Google.com. I fully realise that getting a good placement on the first page for any query on Google isn’t easy but spare thought for those of us who have to contend with this:
This is Google.com.au and it’s the default page that Google sends all Australian searches to. Sadly for web designers and search engine optimisation specialists the search engine results pages for Google.com.au can be somewhat different to the search engine results pages that you get in Google.com.
But wait, there’s more. See the little radio button marked ‘pages from Australia’? If a searcher clicks that button and then searches for the same term they did when the button was not clicked they will more often than not get a completely different listing to what they did when they first searched Google.com.au.
You might think that differing results should be expected, after all Google is only searching for terms that appear on pages from Australia if that radio button is selected. Sadly though you would be wrong - Google also returns pages from the US even if you select that radio button.
Now spare a thought for those of us who need to produce a website that appears at the top of the listing for all three versions of Google - a site such as one built for a tourist attraction in Australia that wants to attract people from overseas and from Australia as well - one that ranks at the top of page 1 for some important search terms in Google.com and Google.com.au but is nowhere to be seen if that ‘pages from Australia’ button is selected.