Can Someone Explain How This Works Please?
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Ok one of mine (dcusnowboarding.com), Irish site, Irish tarageted but on a .com hosted in texas apears number one on pages form Ireland for ages now at year I'd say maybe more.
Explain that!
dcu snowboarding - Google Search
Explain that!
dcu snowboarding - Google Search
RedCardinal
New Member
Only 5 results, but still showing for pages from Ireland.Ok one of mine (dcusnowboarding.com), Irish site, Irish tarageted but on a .com hosted in texas apears number one on pages form Ireland for ages now at year I'd say maybe more.
Explain that!
dcu snowboarding - Google Search
Two commonalities with both sites highlighted - use of google applications which probably dial home with visitor info. Maps, and Adsense / GCS.
Maybe using visitor info to determine where a site is from?
RedCardinal
New Member
True
Imagine backlinks are a likely factor in this.
The Cork site prominently displayed a local address also...
Worth watching...
Imagine backlinks are a likely factor in this.
The Cork site prominently displayed a local address also...
Worth watching...
I would think Google takes pretty much everything you could imagine into account when ranking sites (locally and otherwise), not just big things like the domain name and hosting location but all the little things too. Meaning it's probably possible for every website to appear in any local search. Nearly all aspects can be gamed in one way or another (even domains and hosting locations) so I don't think they would really dismiss much. They obviously have to take a huge broad range of factors into account when ranking sites and they can't be narrow minded and just list .ie's and sites hosted in Ireland in the Irish results and just the same with other local searches.
Of course it's obvious having a .ie will pretty much guarantee inclusion in the Irish results but there will always be people who don't know this and will create, for example, a .com site hosted anywhere in the world that has content related to Ireland. It could be a great site that's of great interest to Irish people and Google I imagine wouldn't want to exclude it. Another example could be a German person setting up a .de(?) site again hosted anywhere but about his fathers Irish history or something. It's going to be much harder for the sites to rank locally but still possible.
Of course it's obvious having a .ie will pretty much guarantee inclusion in the Irish results but there will always be people who don't know this and will create, for example, a .com site hosted anywhere in the world that has content related to Ireland. It could be a great site that's of great interest to Irish people and Google I imagine wouldn't want to exclude it. Another example could be a German person setting up a .de(?) site again hosted anywhere but about his fathers Irish history or something. It's going to be much harder for the sites to rank locally but still possible.
I was thinking that when I seen the DCU, boards.ie links etc.
I gave the local address a thought but my site also has local addresses but does not appear in the pages from Ireland.
The maps did spring to mind, its something that I don't have.
Tom said:
Excellent point Tom, totally agree. The keywords that I target could do with better sites in the pages from Ireland results. For the most part its badly targeted results.
"It could be a great site that's of great interest to Irish people and Google I imagine wouldn't want to exclude it." True enough, but they could do that in the "web search" results without necessarily including it in the PFI ones. Up to now they've been very strict with entry conditions to PFI, if they were to broaden entry it would need to be based on something difficult to game, and whois/links/addresses/traffic just won't fit that bill IMO.
I've never taken the term "pages from Ireland" too literally (as in hosted there, or .ie), I would think of it more as "put more Irish focus on my search". If this is the reality maybe they should rename it. Of course we're used to seeing .ie's populate the results for these searches and so it should be the case, but if it was too literal and rigid and didn't leave the door ajar for other possibilities I think it would be a bad thing for Google search.
Generally when I do an Irish related search I don't want it to just list .ie's or Irish hosted sites, I want it to give me all Irish related websites (most people who never heard of seo or know the difference between .com/.ie probably want and expect the same), .ie's will usually rank highest anyway, again as they should, but if there's a us hosted .com it must be a relevant site to get there (if Google's doing it's job properly) and is probably even run by someone in Ireland.
For a really strict search the advanced search options are there and I think you can put .ie in the domain to limit it to just .ie domains. Not really much point though because it's mostly all .ie's that come up for pfi anyway.
As for what determines eligibility and ranking in local searches, the obvious things like links, domain, hosting and content I reckon all play a part, with a ton of other less obvious stuff too, most likely.
Generally when I do an Irish related search I don't want it to just list .ie's or Irish hosted sites, I want it to give me all Irish related websites (most people who never heard of seo or know the difference between .com/.ie probably want and expect the same), .ie's will usually rank highest anyway, again as they should, but if there's a us hosted .com it must be a relevant site to get there (if Google's doing it's job properly) and is probably even run by someone in Ireland.
For a really strict search the advanced search options are there and I think you can put .ie in the domain to limit it to just .ie domains. Not really much point though because it's mostly all .ie's that come up for pfi anyway.
As for what determines eligibility and ranking in local searches, the obvious things like links, domain, hosting and content I reckon all play a part, with a ton of other less obvious stuff too, most likely.
"The country can be determined in several ways. First, the country can be determined from the extension of the Uniform Resource Locator (URL) of each search result 38. For instance, the URL WHSmith.co.uk is assumed to be either located in or associated with the United Kingdom. Second, the address of the domain registrar can be examined and the country of business inferred. Similarly, the country can be inferred from the IP address of the Web server from which the search result 38 was obtained, from the search result document, or from other Web pages on the same Web site. Finally, the anchor text of the hyperlinks to the search result document, the text near the hyperlinks, or the countries of the Web pages with hyperlinks to the search result documents can be examined. Preferably, a combination of the foregoing methods can be combined to provide more accurate results. In addition, other techniques for detecting the countries associated with search results are possible, as would be recognized by one skilled in the art."
"The countries can be determined from the URL extension of each search result 38 or by examining the domain registrar address and inferring the country of business. The country can also be inferred from the IP address of the Web server from which the search result 38 was obtained, from the search result document, or from other Web pages on the same Web site or by examining the anchor text of the hyperlinks to the search result document, the text near the hyperlinks, or the countries of the Web pages with hyperlinks to the search result documents. A combination of the foregoing methods can be combined to provide more accurate results."
More in this Google's patent application
I've never heard about Google Maps, but can easily imagine Google using this data. I think that the most important factor for now are country specific backlinks.
"The countries can be determined from the URL extension of each search result 38 or by examining the domain registrar address and inferring the country of business. The country can also be inferred from the IP address of the Web server from which the search result 38 was obtained, from the search result document, or from other Web pages on the same Web site or by examining the anchor text of the hyperlinks to the search result document, the text near the hyperlinks, or the countries of the Web pages with hyperlinks to the search result documents. A combination of the foregoing methods can be combined to provide more accurate results."
More in this Google's patent application
I've never heard about Google Maps, but can easily imagine Google using this data. I think that the most important factor for now are country specific backlinks.
"I've never taken the term "pages from Ireland" too literally.."
It's been pretty literal so far, though a foreign language G may give a better indication of it.
If we take G.es they have three options, The Web - Pages in Spanish - Pages from Spain, entry to the first two is not determined by TLD/IP but entry to Pages from Spain is, and strictly.
We've two senior players in this sector that have chosen not to use .ie/Irish hosting, AKAmarketing and Ringjohn, both target Ireland, display irish addresses, have plenty of Irish links yet don't turn up in PFI.
Up to recently that didn't matter as nobody much used PFI, but since G started showing "regionals" in their "web search" results it does as they're based on the PFI results.
The two lads know what they're doing, have plenty of "link juice" so rank well for their terms in "web search", but for any competitive term AN Other on a foreign hosted .com would likely never show up.
It's been pretty literal so far, though a foreign language G may give a better indication of it.
If we take G.es they have three options, The Web - Pages in Spanish - Pages from Spain, entry to the first two is not determined by TLD/IP but entry to Pages from Spain is, and strictly.
We've two senior players in this sector that have chosen not to use .ie/Irish hosting, AKAmarketing and Ringjohn, both target Ireland, display irish addresses, have plenty of Irish links yet don't turn up in PFI.
Up to recently that didn't matter as nobody much used PFI, but since G started showing "regionals" in their "web search" results it does as they're based on the PFI results.
The two lads know what they're doing, have plenty of "link juice" so rank well for their terms in "web search", but for any competitive term AN Other on a foreign hosted .com would likely never show up.
I notice Richard has found another "anomaly", this one has no Irish connections and points towards a glitch rather than a widening of the PFI net...
free games - Google Search
free games - Google Search
RedCardinal
New Member
They are currently on an International bug hunt.
But that Free Games site doesn't seem to have any/many Irish related links pointing at it - probably a bug or perhaps some exploit by them.
google.nl has the same 3 option structure as google.es BTW
Hi folks,
Nice to hear my site is being talked about, mostly always good....
I'm showing up in the PFI as I've now moved hosts. I'm with blacknight now, based in Dublin. Good experience so far. My previous host was based in the UK, I figured I'd try to go for that market of 60m as opposed to 4m however I just became to busy to put the increased SEO effort in that is required to break into top tens on Google.co.uk, so this coupled with the reliability (or lack of) of service from my host meant I decided to go back to Ireland.
Why do people think I've changed my keywords lately? I haven't really been too much aka SEO stuff recently though, perhaps a small bit of link building for my blog, thats it.
By the way do people think that having a site hosted in the UK and with a co.uk will provide more of a regional skew boost than if a site was either a co.uk or physically based in the UK, but not both? Same applies to .ie hosted in Ireland etc. My main concern for this is that if its a .co.uk and hosted in the UK then its .com (american basically) rankings would be hurt. What you think?
Dave.
Nice to hear my site is being talked about, mostly always good....
I'm showing up in the PFI as I've now moved hosts. I'm with blacknight now, based in Dublin. Good experience so far. My previous host was based in the UK, I figured I'd try to go for that market of 60m as opposed to 4m however I just became to busy to put the increased SEO effort in that is required to break into top tens on Google.co.uk, so this coupled with the reliability (or lack of) of service from my host meant I decided to go back to Ireland.
Why do people think I've changed my keywords lately? I haven't really been too much aka SEO stuff recently though, perhaps a small bit of link building for my blog, thats it.
By the way do people think that having a site hosted in the UK and with a co.uk will provide more of a regional skew boost than if a site was either a co.uk or physically based in the UK, but not both? Same applies to .ie hosted in Ireland etc. My main concern for this is that if its a .co.uk and hosted in the UK then its .com (american basically) rankings would be hurt. What you think?
Dave.
If you have a .co.uk Google will automatically rank your website for UK better (of course depending on how much of a relevance will be for your website), but if you have a .com website now you can tell Google what country you are targeting with the new Geographic Target Tool
Set geographic target - Google WebMaster Tools | Eire Web Design
Set geographic target - Google WebMaster Tools | Eire Web Design
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