Local vs Global Search Results Yield Very Different Rankings Lately
-
When I monitor my website's rankings, I always do it from Canada (direct connection) and from the USA (using a VPN in Arizona). I've been monitoring rankings this way for the last 3 years.
Most of the time, I got similar results (-5 / +5) from both location.
My website is a ".com" and targets an international audience.
Lately (is it since Panda 22?), I've seen dramatic differences in rankings from both locations. Some keywords will rank in the top 10 on Google.com (from the USA) while they will appear on page 3, 4, 5 and even lower on Google.ca (from Canada).
The thing is, the top 10 results on Google.ca are not even from canadian websites. Fact of the matter, there are even some results from India websites (.in) in the top 10!
I understand that Google.ca will give advantage to websites from Canada (or targeting the canadian market / .ca domain name) over international / US websites but there's never been such a huge difference in rankings until lately.
Has anybody else experienced this?
What are your thoughts?
-
Have you looked at the hosting country of all websites concerned? I have a .co.uk site that appears in .ca even though it's very directly targeting the UK but is hosted on a dedicated server in Canada.
The other thing to consider is that possibly these sites outranking you in google.ca are targeting .ca in their Webmaster tools, even if it's hard to tell who'd they be targeting based on the sites themselves.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
What would the US traffic increase be for a website YoY if all Google SERP rankings remained the same?
This question has come up a few times with some of our clients and I've spent some time researching this question, but I can't find an answer online so hopefully, someone at MOZ has this data available to them with all the data they collect. The data points that would be needed to answer this question off the top of my head: Increase in the # of Google Searches in the US YoY The decrease in CTR for organic results "10 blue links" which take a searcher off of Google YoY, as Google continues to keep more searchers on Google.com with rich snippets, increased AdWords prominence, AdWords extensions, etc I'm sure this greatly varies per industry, but an average for all industries is all that is needed to answer this client question. Many thanks in advance and I've included a video which hopefully helps to better explain the search "plus/minus" that we can expect to see as SEOs in 2018. WF1yLlJC6LetnpbD3
Search Behavior | | WebpageFX1 -
Which Search Engine Do Women Primarily Prefer?
I found a study in 2005 titled "Men Are From Google, Women Are From Yahoo" showing that women at that time preferred Yahoo as their primary search engine. I'm unable to track down updated statistical data to determine which search engine women primarily prefer. Any links to studies or resources would be greatly appreciated!
Search Behavior | | Prospector-Plastics1 -
Google keyword planner shows low search volumes
Hello, There are some terms that you'd expect to see a lot of results. In fact, in the old days of Keyword Tool, I recall seeing thousands of results for a keyword like "anderson cooper". Today, I see a small amount as a monthly average. Am I doing something wrong? All I really want to do is find search volumes on particular keywords either globally or local to a country. And it's proving soo hard! 😞 Screen_Shot_2013_11_26_at_11_13_20_PM.png
Search Behavior | | mhamilton0 -
Our rel=author profile not show in google result
our "rel= author " profile not show in Google result since last day . Before this our profile is showing in Google serp but suddenly author profile not show for a single page .Google serp rank is ok. for that and other page are working as usual please share views..?
Search Behavior | | SameerBhatia0 -
How to Track Keywords Locally?
Does anyone know how to track keyword rankings locally? Like, if I want to track the ranking for "pizza" for people who search that in our local area? Thanks!
Search Behavior | | fiberglass0 -
Noticed Bing UK and Yahoo UK are almost exactly the same ranking results?
I've run a few keyword ranking updates today and I've noticed that Bing UK and Yahoo UK results are almost exactly the same? This is unusual, the results for these two engines rarely tally with one another. Is anyone seeing the same?
Search Behavior | | MiroAsh0 -
Internal Site Search Analysis
Hi Folks, I have about 6,000 internal site search phrases that I want to analyze. There are many variations and duplicates that have similar intent within the data, e.g. Employment, Employment Opportunities, Employment Application. Does anyone have any thoughts on how I can aggregate the data to get an idea of user intent. There's a lot of long-tail in there. The data does not come from Google's site search tool. I just have a spreadsheet of the terms and the number of times they were searched. Cheers!
Search Behavior | | BedeFahey0 -
Decline in engagement metrics, due to nav changes vs. content changes
With improvements in our rankings, we are seeing adverse changes in our measures of engagement. My gut reaction is to believe we are attracting more unqualified traffic, thus higher bounce rates, declines in pages/visit and time on site (approx 15%, 15%, 25%, respectively). While recent improvements in navigation might have contributed to these engagement declines, do you have any suggestions how best to determine whether these declines are due to nav changes vs. due to copy/content issues? There's been no change in copy content during this period. Thanks.
Search Behavior | | ahw0