We SEOs love a good conspiracy theory. In fact, everyone loves a good conspiracy theory, they’re usually the only interesting thing in the news. I’ve been considering one recently and although there maybe a lack of evidence to prove it at the moment, I felt it was one worth sharing.
Recently we have been seeing some odd results in the SERPS. The general occurrence has been Google showing lots of pages from the US in the UK search results (google.co.uk). You could argue this is nothing new, but it’s the volume of these pages compared to what there was, and the sheer irrelevance of them that is bothering. Take a look at the screen shot below of a search conducted for ‘pet surgery’:
The first four results (outlined in orange) are American sites, which disappear once you select the ‘pages from the UK’ option. Why would I want an American pet surgery when I live in Sussex? Answer: I wouldn’t. Nor would I want American glass vases or American perfume or anything else presented in dollars for that matter. Not because they are of inferior quality but because I don’t want to have to have everything I buy shipped over from the States. Furthermore, the UK does not seem to be an isolated case either, the same has been reported in Japan, Australia and other countries.
Here comes the conspiracy bit -
Everyone is well aware of the global recession and the fact that the US in particular is up the creek without a paddle when it comes to its economy. Google is, at its roots, an American company and has vested interest in the financial state of the country. Is it inconceivable then that a conversation took place at some point between the US government and Google to alter the search results in favour of US sites, thus increasing traffic and also sales for them? What a simple way to boost the economy, just adjust what other countries are seeing in their search results and offer American products instead of domestic ones.
For those of you gasping, rolling your eyes or shaking your head right now at this outrageous allegation, just cast your minds back to the last recession that hit America in the 80′s, where presumably in a ‘light bulb moment’ they decided to just print more money in the hope this would sort things out…which of course it didn’t…it actually made things worse…duh!
If anyone has seen similar results in Google’s SERPS and/or agrees/disagrees with my damming hypothesis of the “do no evil” search engine, please speak now, or forever hold your peace.
Its quite odd that this has happened now exactly when Bing has hit the world
Have Google messed up at the wrong time?
Interesting, I’ve just posted about this but with the term “Commercial Laundry Equipment” http://www.aukseo.co.uk/us-websites-ranking-in-googlecouk-an-example-commercial-laundry-equipment-522/
That example has a before and after of the serp but it’s not a very competitive key phrase compared to “pet surgery” of medium difficulty. As for the conspiracy, good call but I can’t seen Google saying that’s the problem.
I’ll stick a link from my blog post to this article.
It might increase traffic for them, but I don’t see how it would increase sales; the vast majority of users (I’d imagine) would click off the moment they saw dollar signs
I would agree Dom, the majority would bounce, but think of the accumulative effect across millions of search terms and millions of sites. More traffic will almost always drive more sales
I am seeing some real dross in Google’s results. Is this another case of US giant not giving a hoot about a smaller market?
There is no question UK results are skewed at this time. If you want clean results, you should use the UK specific filter again. Talk about retro!
You know my thoughts on Bing, but I tell you, the results are offering a challenge to Google.
Does that mean that my American Pit Bull doesn’t have a “return to base” warranty then? I don’t think it reflects anything other than the overall hegemony of US cultural imperialism generally. Very much doubt it’s a genuine, deliberate, conspiracy – the US government isn’t that joined up.
Scrap that last comment with regard Bing’s results being any good.
I have just been looking at Bing with Dave at Crusader Vans and came to a very quick conclusion they were garbage!
There has been a lot of discussion about this on UKBF:
http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?p=891957
Everyone I know who works in search has noticed this. Initially I notice that Google changed the results right at the begining of June, but only for a few hours. Then on the 3rd of June it was changed and has not been changed back.
Since then there has been a number of people reporting ranking drops at UKBF. In some cases , dropping more than 20 pages.
I’ve noticed SEO terms seem to have been the hardest hit. One term, “seo firm” no longer has any UK results in the top 10. You guys seem to have come out of it pretty well though – now sitting on page one for “SEO”.
However, I’ve found google.com is now ranking some UK sites higher than before.
I have a solution – Fresh Egg should build a UK search engine/portal! Perhaps you could cross-refer to Google maps results and other really fancy pants stuff, but focus on getting good results at a very local level. Maybe integrate a recommendation-scored directory. I’ve never heard of a search engine being marketed as completely homegrown and UK-specific before – it would be quite newsworthy in a time when we’re looking for national pride.