Google.com or Google.co.uk

[deniser]

Does anyone have any statistics as to whether people doing internet shopping in the UK use google.com or co.uk? I believe IE directs you automatically to .co.uk whereas Firefox for example takes you to .com.

When in google .co.uk, do people then usually go with the default option of "worldwide results" or select "pages from the UK"?

Just interested as one of my search terms is 2nd place on co.uk pages from the UK but dips in and out of co.uk worldwide - sometimes it ranks no.1 and other times it is nowhere to be seen. This is without me changing anything on the site.

Just wondering why as it has been going on for about 4 weeks now.

[MikeBzr]

I always tend to default to .com - its only when I struggle to find what I'm looking for that I go to .co.uk, and select 'pages from the uk' - just force of habit.

[OldWelshGuy]

Google redirect UK based IP's to google.co.uk irrespective of browsr. If your ISP is Uk based, then you are geo located to the .uk version of google and the results are geo bweighted to uk sites also.

as for the 'uk only' site search, this tends to only happen when the SERP returned is full of foreign sites. FAR more likely than hitting the 'uk only' is to append the search with 'uk' or other geo locating keywords.

[Keepsmilin]

I agree with OldWelshGuy.. Google redirects you to .co.uk or IP based extensions irrespective of the browser.

Cheers

:)
Ezylet.com

[MikeBzr]

Hmm, must have missed that as 9 times out of ten for searches I use 'g search query' in the opera address bar - which runs the search through google.com

[spiritadventures]

Google redirect UK based IP's to google.co.uk irrespective of browsr. If your ISP is Uk based, then you are geo located to the .uk version of google and the results are geo bweighted to uk sites also.

as for the 'uk only' site search, this tends to only happen when the SERP returned is full of foreign sites. FAR more likely than hitting the 'uk only' is to append the search with 'uk' or other geo locating keywords.


I dont want to diasgree with you as I am clueless how these things work. But I know for a fact that my website comes up in different positions when I search certain keywords in .com and .co.uk and my position is better on the .co.uk than .com - I assumed it was to do with geography!

[MikeBzr]

I recently did a review of the performance of a clients site for which he used both the .co.uk and .com versions of his address across the .com and .co.uk engines. The findings really didn't suggest anything consistant about the effect of geographical location and search engine used - however any differences either way were minimal.

(This is of course, just one case)

[OldWelshGuy]

I dont want to diasgree with you as I am clueless how these things work. But I know for a fact that my website comes up in different positions when I search certain keywords in .com and .co.uk and my position is better on the .co.uk than .com - I assumed it was to do with geography!

That is exactly what I thought I said, results are weighted to the locality you are based in, the weightin being based on the location of the searcher, and the physical location of the site. :)

1. google.com - search from the uk Will carry Uk weighted results.
2. google.com - search from the US will carry US weighted results
3. Google.co.uk - search from the Uk will cary VERY heavily weighted Uk weighted results.

[OldWelshGuy]

I recently did a review of the performance of a clients site for which he used both the .co.uk and .com versions of his address across the .com and .co.uk engines. The findings really didn't suggest anything consistant about the effect of geographical location and search engine used - however any differences either way were minimal.

(This is of course, just one case)

are you saying he has identical content on both the .uk & .com domains?

[MikeBzr]

They both point to the same site - the review was prior to me taking on the project so I can't be blamed for that ;)

[OldWelshGuy]

They both point to the same site - the review was prior to me taking on the project so I can't be blamed for that ;)

Good job they have someone who knows what theya re doing then.

[MikeBzr]

Indeed, although I was surprised by the performance of both addresses in the SERPs, especially considering the guy who originally developed their site not only didn't consider SEO, but coded so poorly that you'd expect it to have done damage to their performance.

Perfect example is one of his indexed pages showing up with a description on google of "a, a, a, img, a, a, a" - the developer hadn't used any meta info, and that jibberish was the alt tags he'd used for images on the site.

I don't consider myself an SEO expect by any stretch of the imagination - however I do focus on development level internal SEO (things like semantic coding, mod_rewrites etc) rather than external - so I lay the foundations for others to take it foward with an ongoing managed SEO campaign.