"Local" links - any real benefits?

[glengara]

Often seen it suggested that local links can help "foreign" pages rank better in the specific national G, but does anyone have grounds to believe this?

In some earlier testing I looked at "web design" in the "search the web" results on the different Gnews sites, results were identical across the board ( uk/aus/nz/in/ie/za), there appeared to be no "regionalising" of results, it was as close to a "clean" DB as I could find.

Using that list I then did a normal search on the different Googles to see if any of those sites broke the pattern on any specific G, I found a few that did but unfortunately those few also had thousands of links making it impossible to verify their provenance.

IMO if regional links DO help foreign pages rank in national Gs it should be fairly easy to spot, particularly in G.in

 

[glengara]

OK, bit of an update.... I redid that test using "PPC management" and came across a couple of interesting anomalies in the G.in "web search" results.

In the top ten there's a couple of "foreign" pages that have appeared out of nowhere, that is not on the original Gnews "list", and both have an unusual ratio of Indian links.

It looks promising, but I'm going to check out some other terms before jumping to any conclusions

 

[rick22]

Yea it will help but only in Hosting country not worldwide , because if the site have p.r 5 in .co. your country but its not that it will be same on Google.com....