Google UK Search seems to be undergoing a new period of testing. It has become apparent that the “pages from the UK” radio button, under the Google search bar, has been disappearing for periods of time. This has lead to wide speculation from within the Search Marketing community. Does this mean the end of UK Serps or are Google going to remove the radio button and focus on providing location based results using user IP addresses?
Earlier in the month Google were reported to have been integrating international search results into UK Serps as part of a testing process, it’s looking more and more likely that this was part of an initial test into the use of IP specific results. Although this is not new technology it does seem the most logical explanation and subsequently you can understand why the radio button would become obsolete and be removed.
If Google was to take this route it would still need to offer its users a way of being able to search Google internationally for products or services, unless international results were given less weight and UK results were served ahead of international on generic keywords. If this was possible it could potentially offer a much more relevant user experience while still allowing users to find international products by using country specific keywords.
We will just have to wait and see what happens, but one thing is for sure, something big is coming!
Article Writen By Creative SEO
Wednesday, 1. July 2009
Happening now to a colleague of mine. We’re in New Zealand and it has removed the ability to select the restrict to NZ radio button on the home page and on only some result pages.
In addition to this on some results there is a text link above the results that says “show results from New Zealand”
kinda interesting shift, considering the reduced geo targetted influence in its ‘the web’ results.