Google internationalisation
I used to have my homepage set to http://www.google.nl. This is the dutch translation of google. When I browse to http://www.google.com, by default it redirects me to the .nl version (probably by scanning my http_accept_language headers, or through my ip).
Lately I've noticed that google.nl not only has a dutch interface, but favours dutch pages. In other words, the results I see are not only based on pagerank, but also on the language.
In my opinion, this is wrong. Even though the pages are in my native language, that does not mean they are more relevant to my search than international pages. I'd rather have 10 good international links on top, than 2 bogus dutch ones.
For example, a search on 'php' on google.nl gives me dutch results on the first page, that are a lot less interesting than the results I get for the same query on the . com site. And that is without using the 'search for pages in dutch' option. It's just the default.
I'm not sure if this is something that has always been there but I simply didn't notice before, or if this is a change in the pagerank algorithm. Given the number of times I've noticed it lately, I suspect the latter.
For now, I've set the default home in all my browsers to the .com version (I also had to change a setting at google to prevent it from keeping redirecting me to the .nl version).
Entries (RSS)
March 7th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
That’s one of those annoying things… and the only way to stop the redirect every time you hit google, is to let them store thier cookie (of course that’s no longer an issue seeing that I am constantly using a lot of google’s services.)
Breath in, breath out and repeat after me… Google Knows Best! Google Knows Best! Google Knows Best!
March 7th, 2006 at 10:46 pm
Yes, this is one of those things I frown upon too.
My personal website gives very good results in the dutch version. 5th position for the search string - freelance php developer - and 3th place for - freelance php.
To prevent google from favouring local pages, you could browse to http://www.google.com/ncr, instead of http://www.google.com. I set it to my startpage
March 7th, 2006 at 10:48 pm
I met the problem around half a year ago when developing a SEO tool in PHP using the Google APIs to fetch search results on specific keywords. We noticed that the order in which the results are returned differ from what we see when searching on the Hungarian Google site. It’s not a new issue though not an easy one to notice.
March 8th, 2006 at 1:13 am
I think it’s region based rather than language based.
For 90% of the population this is the desired behaviour.
If I searched for car prices I would want local results, not the price of a car in timbuktu. Similarily if I was after dog dealers, or basically anything else that related to the real world.
March 27th, 2006 at 9:33 pm
After I noticed the internationalisation quirks in google, I found several other things that seem to suggest that google starts to ‘think’ for the user.
If on google.com, I perform a regular search for ‘pagani zonda’, google first presents me three ima
April 7th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
that is that’s useless of google , Google look to your IP adress, i want to Google.com , We have dutch internet and fucking google network go to look to my ip adress, so your used http://www.youhide.com , now can google not more look to your ip,