Comments on: The UK SERP’s are Fine

By: More rubbish UK search results » malcolm coles

More rubbish UK search results » malcolm coles — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 05:11:46 +0000

[...] Green recently argued that the UK SERPS are fine: If you search for a query that is much more commonly used in another English speaking country, you [...]

By: Rob Green

Rob Green — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:20:12 +0000

@ Adam Rammond – I am not entirely convinced that this is the best way for this to work, only that it is definitely happening. I think in a lot of cases (especially the DVD example), results may aften be poor – but I am sure there are also cases when this needs to happen.

Seems to be a good indication that the localisation of results for countries that speak the same language, and have locations with the same name, is a very complex task that may not be perfect at the moment.

By: Rob Green

Rob Green — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:15:55 +0000

@Adam Lee – totally agree on the suggestions – david naylor recently talked about that exact issue.

By: Adam Rammond

Adam Rammond — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 13:05:53 +0000

Rob – Good article and I agree with what you are saying with regards to the example you provided. I too do not subscribe to the fact that the UK Serps are broken, however, I would question the change to the algorithm to open up the SERPs to websites that are hosted in a particular country where that search term is more popular.

Do you believe this is a good move on Google’s behalf? Take another example of ‘Rent Movies’ – i’m not too sure on the keyword popularity but using your logic (which I agree with is happening) – more US websites are returning in Google UK than UK websites because that term is more popular in the States than in the UK. No company will ship DVDs across the Atlantic. Although not as popular a search term – people in the UK still want to be able to rent a DVD. So I think this is where the frustration has come from. It is actually diminishing the searchers experience, which could be a reason for the sharp rise in ‘UK’ related search terms.

Cheers.

By: Adam Lee

Adam Lee — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:46:14 +0000

Good post Rob, it shows that more research is necessary when conducting keyword discovery.
The only problem I see with the example above is with Google suggesting the term ‘compare adsl broadband plans’. I appreciate packages might be used more in the UK but since Google introduced suggestions in the search box as standard I would expect a lot of people would just click on the suggestion – resuling in the Australian website results.
Google either need to change their suggestions for each region or they need to sort out the regionality in the results they display.

On another note – I would never say the UK results are ‘broken’ because good has had this little button for years. It’s called pages from the UK and anyone that wants UK only results can easily click on that!

By: Tweets that mention The UK SERP’s are Fine | Rob Green -- Topsy.com

Tweets that mention The UK SERP’s are Fine | Rob Green -- Topsy.com — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 13:36:21 +0000

[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Randip Dhesi, Rob Green. Rob Green said: My post on why I think the #UKSERPs are fine: http://bit.ly/6SLiLU [...]