This article discusses whether Google can effectively deliver country-specific search results. The author examines search results for Canada through Google.ca and finds that many of the top paid and non-paid results are actually American companies, not Canadian as might be expected. This is a concern for business owners who want to compete locally rather than with international companies. The author argues Google should weigh domain names and business contact information matching the target country more heavily to improve local search relevance.

1. Can Google Really Deliver Country Specific Searching?

2. This is a serious matter, can Google really deliver top
quality search results for other countries? The answer so
far is "sort of". In this article I will use Canada as an
example of the quality or lack of thereof, that is
delivered by Google's search results.

3. Let's take a look at Canadian search results by
Google.ca:

4. When you highlight "Canada" through Google search
results and then start searching, you may be surprised at
the amount of companies that aren't really Canadian. All
of this also applies for the UK and other major markets
as well...

5. In fact, many of the "paid results" come from American
companies. Now some would argue that this is to be
expected, coming from American companies with large
budgets but I would disagree because a lot of the bulk of
the "Canadian specific" results are also American
companies.

6. It is quite evident that this is a growing concern with
business owners residing in different countries.

7. As an owner not from the US, I would rather compete
with companies that are more local than not, simply
because the results would then be relevant. Irrelevant
results equal to poor results and less people take the
search results seriously when they keep sifting through
poor quality results online.

8. For example; If you highlight "search in Canada" and
search for "web design", the top 2 results seem not to
be from Canada. This is a serious issue. What if people
click on "I'm feeling lucky", they are redirected to a
company outside of Canada. The average person won't
know what to think about that and may disregard
searching through Canadian results any further.

9. The more content specific the results are, the more
people will search through those results. The more
people will tell their friends & peers to search through
those results. See, as web marketers, we do have the
power to create a search term that people get familiar
with. Just look at "Blogging". A couple of years ago, if
you asked people to search online for "blogging" sites,
you would have had a lot of confused faces staring at
you. Nowadays, if you search for blogging, there are
more than 900,000 results found in Google and to top
that off, there is more than enough paid advertisers as
well.

10. What do we see changing in Google?

11. The #1 thing we are now seeing more and more is search
results listing websites with country specific domain
name extensions. Here's what I mean by that....

12. If you were Google and you wanted to deliver better
search results for Canada, how would you go about
doing that?

13. I would look at 2 things:

14. 1) Does the domain name end with .ca? (Ex.
www.smartads.ca)

15. 2) Does the "contact" information about the company
match the country - Street, City, Province/State, Country.
Are all of these factors listed within the contact page?

16. These are very important factors, evidenced to the fact
that, I see Google weighing your "contact" page higher
than anything else within your website other than your
front page. So the moral is, make sure to list EXACTLY
where it is that you do business within your contact
page. Your website will rank higher for local searching
when this technique is utilized.

17. Second, make sure to buy a domain name(s) that is
country specific. If you live in Canada, buy a domain
with the extension (.ca). If you live in the United
Kingdom, make sure to buy a domain name with the
extension (.uk). If you live in the US, make sure to buy a
domain name with the extension (.us).

18. You may be asking, what if I don't want to concentrate
on just local searching? Create a separate website to
target different areas. There is nothing with .com, in fact
most people automatically type in .com but, if you truly
want to target locally, you have to play locally.

19. The future of search engines is local searching! We are
seeing an increasing amount of evidence to sustain this
claim. Targeting locally is a great start and will ultimately
help you to target internationally later on!

20. I hope this article helps you out!

21. http://earncashonlinesite.info/form.php?id=628760