Why would google favour overseas retailers? Really weird results..
-
Why would google favour results from overseas retailers for queries in the UK? It's weird since most won't ship to the UK and the same products are found at dozens of UK retailers. It's not the case that the overseas sites are necessarily bigger brands or better SEO optimised, so having asked the leading agencies in the UK and them being stumped I was curious if this was something anyone else had seen? Our theory is that this can only be a poorly disguised attempt to drive Adwords.
-
Page 2 and 3 is particularly bad but even page 1 is bad. Some terms in the industry show US retailers on position 1 that don't even ship to the UK.
I really don't think people from the UK interact that much with some of the sites on page 1 - by contrast leaving aside Amazon and Ebay they would be unknowns here to 99% of people. I also don't think it is results from google.com since why would random foreign language retailers appear so high up (in fact if we assumed they were showing USA results, I would be asking why so few US retailers show compared to those from New Zealand and South Africa).
Having put this one to Rand I think the issue here isn't as easily solved as I hoped but you are right about their results. When they are this bad people will switch to Bing.
-
I see. Page 2 and 3 is pretty far down the chain. My guess is that Google knows how much people in the UK interact with the .com version of websites via social, email, price comparisons, research, and on and on, to the point that they include some results no matter what--unless, like you said, someone specifically says UK only. Is this a negative? Maybe for some searches, but on average users are going to the .com as well by choice.
I guess that's an issue for a retailer that's solely UK based, but a non-issue for the percentages when you get into them at the level Google deals with. ultimately they want to keep providing a service that people find valuable, so if it gets too far afield they'll go to Yahoo or Bing.
-
Hi Ryan
I checked preferences and also ran the same search incognito. I have also asked people living 200 miles away to do the same and everyone is getting the same results. The only way Google displays relevant results is by going to advanced search and then requesting only pages from within the UK.
If you try that search yourself on google.co.uk do you get a bunch of overseas retailers including American especially on pages 2-3?
Just wondering if perhaps it is an issue only for searches performed from within the UK..
-
I don't think it's on a term by term basis. Either people are experiencing search directly from google.com or they're being redirected to google.co.uk and getting results there. If you look in the search preference section of your various browsers you'll likely see that it's set to google.com by default and is relying on the search engine to redirect you to google.co.uk based on your IP. if you change this to google.co.uk within the browser you won't get sent to google.com.
-
Thanks for coming back to me and for a moment I thought that answered the question but checking various product terms on Google UK shows me the same results on four different devices and across Chrome, Safari and IE.
I noticed that the article referenced Office Desks producing US results but that term seems to be back to normal.
Given the above the mystery remains!
-
Hard to say. It looks like this has been more pronounced issue recently (https://www.venndigital.co.uk/blog/2015/01/is-google-killing-uk-businesses-organic-traffic/) and could be partly a glitch. There have been several big shifts going on in this time frame though...
- Ongoing EU legislation / voting to break up Google.
- Firefox makes Yahoo the browser's default search engine.
- Google incorporates Google Wallet into Gmail in the UK.
- And per that article, Google.com starts appearing in search instead of Google.co.uk.
There's even more coverage of it here: http://www.thesempost.com/google-chrome-redirecting-uk-users-google-com-instead-google-co-uk/ but my guess is that these things are somewhat related. From that article, John Mueller from Google suggests you submit this form if it's affecting you: https://support.google.com/websearch/contact/ip. Personally I've seen the behavior in other browsers other than Chrome: Opera for example.
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
-
Google Latest Algorithmic Change about Https & Mobile Friendliness
How effective did it prove for anyone with the latest algorithmic change google search engine made for being mobile friendly and using https (valid ssl certificate). I see a good change being made under the ecommerce category for sites being used for online shopping. Let me know if anyone observes a major difference.
Algorithm Updates | | mozexpone0 -
Is there a we to get Google to index our site quicker?
I have updated some pages on a website, is there a way to get Google to index the page quicker?
Algorithm Updates | | webguru20140 -
Please help explain this (Question about search results)
What's up SEO's, I'm new the SEO world and had a quick question. I just installed the MOZBAR and did a google search: "What is Google Voice" I attached an image of the results I received. Can someone explain how MacWorld's article outranked Google's when both Google's Page Authority and Domain Authority are so much stronger than MacWorlds. This is in addition to google having many more links. This is basic, but any insight will be very helpful. Thanks guys! [Screen%20Shot%202014-02-18%20at%206.08.15%20PM.png](file:///Users/jackfarrell/Desktop/Screen%20Shot%202014-02-18%20at%206.08.15%20PM.png)
Algorithm Updates | | Petbrosia1 -
Pages fluctuating +/- 70 positions in Google SERPs?
I've got some pages that appear somewhere around #25 in Google. Every now and then, it just goes away from the top 100 results for a few days (even up to a week) and then it comes back. I've got other pages that rank around #8 which falls down to about #75 for a while and then it comes back. But while a page may be gone from the top 100 results in the US, it still ranks at about the same place everywhere else in the world (+/- 10 positions). I've seen this happen in the past but never it happened so often. What gives?!?
Algorithm Updates | | sbrault740 -
Google.uk rankings plummet, .com improves. What to do?
Hey Guys, Seems so much has changed with international SEO I'm not sure what to do with our site. We have a huge site with many country level landing pages that perform very well on google.com searches (IE; keyword + Jamaica) etc. We are not using a .co.uk version of our site and now our rankings have plummeted in the UK. Should we just make a .co.uk with similar (or the exact same content) or is there some newer strategy to follow?
Algorithm Updates | | iAnalyst.com0 -
Help, I am in Local Search Results!
I do not know what to do with this... and could use a bit of advice on this issue: "Doing things right", resulted in great organic rankings and a bonus by showing top of local search results for our area. Sounds great... until Google decides it was time to mix things up a little. I do not know if this applies to all types of businesses, but for ours it means that you will no longer get any organic page 1 listing if you are a local business that (un)luckily ranks in local results too. One day G will include local results on a keyword, the next they won't... making our SEOMoz Campaign rankings weekly a true yo-yo of "50 keywords declined by >48 and >49 places", and "30 keywords improved by <47 and <49". It turned this feature in campaigns completely useless for me (ever since SEOMoz decided to include the local result light bulb that is) Some traffic dropped from 240 a day for one keyword, to 30 now for that same keyword. Frustrated? You bet. I do not understand why Google seems to create a war with local businesses. Should we get out of Local results or does anyone have any ideas, suggestions? Thanks a bunch guys!
Algorithm Updates | | Discountvc3 -
Meta Title Not Showing up in Google
Hello Friends, I have a website, www.bollywoodshaadis.com. On 1st may we changed our servers and revamped our website as per SEO updated guidelines. For some strange reason Google is not showing site Meta Title when you search the website on Google. All it shows is the domain name in the meta title. However, when you search info:www.bollywoodshaadis.com it shows the right Meta tags. Any reason for this happening? I have never seen this before. Thank you in advance.
Algorithm Updates | | SEOcandy0 -
Domain Authority and Google keywords
Hi there, We have a domain authority of 33, one of our competitors has an authority of 10, yet they appear to list higher on many keyword searches in google. Is there a reason for this? Our site is 5 months old, and their site is over 3 yrs old. Thanks for your feedback 🙂
Algorithm Updates | | PHDAustralia680