Google question

[watervole]

How much notice does Google take of the country a site is hosted in?

I'm getting deeply puzzled by my Dupuytren's site.  They've done a fair bit of work on the site (doing several things that people have suggested to me, especially Phil), and they've got a lot more links than they used to, but they seem stuck about half way up Google.  They were in the 90s and they're now in the 40s (they actually got into the early 30s in mid July, but then slipped down again).

It's a large site with many pages on connected topics and I just can't see why it's stuck at this level on Google.  I wonder if the fact that it's a German site (albeit English language) is part of the problem.

Has anyone any ideas?

Comments

[elmyra.livejournal.com]

I'm going to be in Germany this weekend. Give me some search terms and I'll get you screenshots of the results if you think that will help.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

The two search terms I'm using are "Dupuytren's" and "Dupuytren's Contracture"

On Google UK, the first is currently number 46 and the second is 89.

The site I'm looking for is http://www.dupuytren-online.info/index.html (or any page that starts dupuytren-online) It's a German charity that collects information about Dupuytren's disease and gives reports on different treatments.

I'd love it if someone in the US could run a comparison as well.

[jthijsen.livejournal.com]

I just googled "Dupuytren's" on google.nl and your site was number 21. The first result I got was a Dutch site, so I suspect that your location does make a difference. "Dupuytren's Contracture" put the site at number 46.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

That's VERY interesting. Dutch Google obviously rates German sites a lot higher than Google UK does.

They have a lot of people linking to the site, but the country of origin is causing a big problem...

[jophan.livejournal.com]

I get it at around 30, but hey, this is out "of about 160,000" hits. You think that's bad?

[watervole.livejournal.com]

Effectively, it is bad. It's at a level where most people won't find it, and it's an extremely useful site as it's the only one I've found that evaluates ALL the treatment options and isn't trying to sell you anything.

Which country were you looking from?

[jophan.livejournal.com]

Mm. I think you can contact Google themselves and ask. They are usually pretty concerned with their page rank working as well as possible. I wonder whether perhaps the .info top domain isn't depreciated, even. It's full of crap.

I'm looking from Sweden.

[jthijsen.livejournal.com]

I have just looked at google.de and got it at 55. The first site was the mayo clinic site and there were several dutch sites. I am now officially puzzled...

Dupuytren & Google

[taverymate.livejournal.com]

I'm in the US and ran a Google search using "Dupuytren's" and "Dupuytren's Contracture". The site you're looking for turned up #32. The first listing was for: orthoinfo.aaos.org/fact/thr_report.cfm?Thread_ID=140. Mayo Clinic was #2.

[elmyra.livejournal.com]

Searching for Dupuytren's from Germany on google.de brings it up 18th. Searching what I think is google.com (whatever my Dad's default Firefox search bar Google iteration is) brings it up 27th. HTH.

[jthijsen.livejournal.com]

Google apparently weighs the importance of a page by the number of links that refer to it. Those links in turn are weighted in the same manner. So having a lot of links on your page, no matter how useful they are, won't help you a bit, you need to get lots of other people to link to your page.

Of course, that's the simple approach they took when they just started. Things got a lot more complicated later on. But I think it still plays a big part.

[kerravonsen]

Interesting; I got it at #17 and #39 respectively, from here in Australia.

[drplokta]

If you are searching for pages in a specific country, Google will only return sites that have an IP address in that country's range or a country-specific domain name. Unless you specify a country when searching, it shouldn't make a difference.

[kerravonsen]

But it apparently does make a difference, as these different data-points are showing...

[kremmen.livejournal.com]

Location is used extensively by google. It'll give preference to local sites. On Google USA, the top entry is Mayo Clinic and the site you're after is 26th. On Google Australia, the top entry is a Victorian Government page, while the site you're after is 17th.

(As an additional guess, most .info sites are crap, so I would not be surprised if Google downgrades them for not being a .com/.net/.org too.)

[philbradley.livejournal.com]

Google has in the past denied the TLD (Top Level Domain) as being important, but I think it's pretty obvious that it is. Yes, Google takes note of the country of origin, which is a sensible thing to do. If I want say, tourist attractions in Essex, there's not much point in it returning the US Essex above the UK one, so you will see differences when you use different country versions.

It's also to be expected that the ranking will go up and down over time - this is perfectly normal and to be expected. The main thing to hope for however is that it's usually a rise up the charts. The closer to the top you get, the less the up/down is - generally only by a couple of places, so I'm not surprised at your results. However, you're equally right to be concerned at the apparent glass ceiling you've discovered, and early 30s just doesn't cut it, as you have pointed out.

Continue to do what you are doing though, since it is working - get more links, and particularly get links from places like DMOZ (Open Directory Project) if you haven't already, a Squidoo (.com) lens (helps a bit sometimes) and as many links from directory search engines as you can. I'd also go to major health sites like Healia or Netdoctor and tell them about the site and see if they'll link to it. Also Wikipedia and so on.

Contacting Google isn't a bad idea - the worst that will happen is no reply. You might also want to take slightly more drastic measures and move the site to the US if all else fails. Also, do remember that the Big G isn't the best way of measuring the importance of the site - what's more important are the number of visitors that you're getting. This should be rising as you're doing more work anyway - not everyone will arrive via Google, so you should have a good statistics package available to see exactly what is happening.

Finally - this is NOT necessarily something that will happen quickly. You're still, relatively, in the short term - you need to wait a year before expecting to see continual trustworthy results. Don't be discouraged!

[jophan.livejournal.com]

It has already been submitted to the Health/Conditions_and_Diseases/Musculoskeletal_Disorders/Contractures/Dupuytren's (http://www.dmoz.org/Health/Conditions_and_Diseases/Musculoskeletal_Disorders/Contractures/Dupuytren%27s/) category in DMOZ by the site owners I note (I have editing rights in the project), so there's nothing more to be done about that than wait. The ODP has a large backlog, so it may take sometime before the link is added, I'm afraid.

I agree that Google pays a lot of attention to DMOZ listings.

[watervole.livejournal.com]

The site owners are pretty active in trying to promote it, but they aren't sure what methods are most effective. I'm working with them to try and help - it seems a fair return for the help the site has given me. I'd never have found the treatment I'm currently getting if it wasn't for the site.