Google Algorithm Update
Yesterday some members of Digital Point Forums were talking about a Google search results update and checking the results I would say they were correct. The thing that sticks out the most is that a lot of newish .com sites that are hosted in the UK have had a nice little boost in the Google.co.uk rankings.
Three of the .com sites that I have worked on over the last few months up until yesterday were strangely performing much better on Google.com then they were on Google.co.uk (all of these sites were hosted in the UK).
I have two possible theories about why this has happened either Google.co.uk is very careful about determining which .com sites are actually from the UK and it just takes a long time or Google have just fixed there algorithm so that all UK hosted .com sites now get full Google.co.uk ranking benefit.
It is not just my clients who have been affected, I have noticed many .com sites are now performing much better, Kevin Gibbons site SEOptimise.com appears to have shot up in the rankings, congratulations Kev.
I have not said anything to my clients yet, just in case their rankings disappear, I will wait until next week because I have made that mistake before.
Posted in Search Engine News By David Eaves a UK search engine optimisation specialist.
If you enjoyed this post why not subscribe to the RSS feed.
September 14th, 2007 3 Comments
You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
September 16th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
That’s interesting to see that you’ve found other website’s with similar results, this seems to be a very interesting algorithm update. The SEOptimise search rankings had been quite good on google.com but outside the top 100 for a lot of the same searches on google.co.uk until last week.
It looks like there’s been some sort of change which means Google recognises UK hosted .com’s in a more equal way to .co.uk’s now. Although I’m still a bit like you at the moment and hoping the rankings don’t drop back overnight!
Cheers for the link
September 16th, 2007 at 11:30 pm
I have noticed a little bit of joy with rankings too in the last week. My site is about 12 months old, hosted in the UK and is a .com – so I would agree with your theory. Finger crossed it is here to stay.
September 18th, 2007 at 12:14 pm
Yep, things look on the up, and not just if the site is hosted on a UK server too. In the recent update and almost once a week, I’m notcing my site gradually move on up. The site itself has been online for around 18 months and I’m now on the second page of results for ‘internet marketing’, ‘internet advertising’, ‘online marketing’, ‘online advertising’, ‘web marketing’ and ranking roughly the same if you reverse the search phrases too. I’ve also seemed to have embedded in at the bottom of the first page of results on Google for ‘link building’, and have the top two spots for ‘backward link building’.
The site is hosted in the U.S. but the language used is distinctly English English, not American English, which may be down to this new fandangled natural language algo which has supposedly kicked in and may even be picking up the difference between U.S. and U.K. English to rank them accordingly. My rankings are far better on google.co.uk, than Google.com