 By
Ian McAnerin
When people do a search with "Canadian Sites Only", the search engines
filter out what it thinks are non - Canadian sites. How the search
engines make this decision may surprise and shock you. This article
also applies to people in other countries, as well.
Local Searches
When a person wishes to search for a product or service that is specific
to Canada, they will often choose the "Canadian Sites Only" button
on Google.ca, Sympatico.ca,
or a number of other Canadian search engines. Searchers in the UK
and other countries do the same for their local search engines - searching
only for websites from their own country.
I recently did a ranking report on a highly regarded law firm in Calgary,
Alberta, Canada. They ranked fairly well in Google (the most popular
search engine in the world), had a nice site, and felt that they had
basically no real problems, website-wise.
As part of my services, I check for local searches whenever a company
is not from the US. When I did a "Canadian Sites Only" search, they
did not show up! Even typing in the domain name specifically (which
will show up even the most poorly optimized site) did not return their
site. A few companies that had linked to them showed up, but not the
firm itself.
A quick check traced their website to a web host in Florida, who no
doubt is giving them a good price. Unfortunately, anyone looking for
a lawyer in Canada (or Calgary) and who is looking for "Canadian"
websites will never find them.
Some services, such as those requiring detailed knowledge of local
affairs - like lawyers, accountants, and other professionals, are
obvious candidates for these searches. It doesn't matter to the searcher
how great a lawyer from Brazil is when they have a problem in Italy.
Usually they do not wish to wade through pages of non-local results
hoping that someone will eventually show up that could help them
It is critical that anyone whose job is related or derived from the
government or legal system of a particular country to show up not
only for generic searches, but also for country specific ones.
Additionally, many people prefer to deal with local companies either
due to a desire to support local businesses, or to ensure that if
there is a serious problem, that they can be found and dealt with
by local courts and laws.
Both of these situations provide a great opportunity for smaller,
local websites to rank highly on a search engine, since the search
engine discards non-local results and presents only local ones
when this choice is on.
How the Decision is Made
Most people don't really think about how the decision is made by the
search engines on where a specific website is. They assume that perhaps
it looks for an address or maybe looks at the extension.
Many people in Canada have registered their domains as .com, and not
.ca. If you have a .com website, how would a search engine decide
if you were Canadian or not? What about foreign companies who just
bought a .ca domain?
If a spammer puts the word Canada 10 times on his page or typed in
a Canadian address, would he be considered a Canadian? If that worked,
they could just create pages full of the names of each country they
wanted to rank highly in.
Knowing this, the programmers of the major search engines have decided
to use the IP address of a website as the way to find out what country
it's from. If you register a co.uk (United Kingdom) or .com / .net
/.org extension but host it in Canada you will get a Canadian IP address
from your web host and therefore be considered a Canadian website
in this case.
Basically, the country of your websites "residence" is the distinguishing
factor, not it's owner, domain name or content.
So What's
the Problem?
The problem is that most web hosts don't know this, and often wouldn't
care much if they did. Most purchasers of web hosting are interested
in the price, performance, and features of the web server, not the
location of it's IP. Likewise, many web hosts, including Canadian
website hosts, buy reseller or co-location packages from US companies
due to the price, performance and features.
So it's not uncommon for a Canadian website host to have IP's that
are provided by the US company that is providing their upstream service.
In short, they are using US IP's. The US company cannot even offer
Canadian IP's to it's clients and resellers without opening up a physical
presence in Canada.
So it's possible that a Canadian company, selling products and services
to Canadians, with a .ca domain name and a Canadian website host (who
they are paying in Canadian dollars) is not considered to be Canadian,
and likely be removed from any searches done looking for Canadian
companies!
So how can you tell if your site has a local IP address?
Well, if you are showing up on Google during a normal search, then
the same search with "Sites from Canada" chosen should display your
site, as well. If it doesn't, then you are not considered to be a
Canadian site and your IP is likely the culprit.
Conclusion
Even if you don't care whether or not you are considered to be from
your local country or not, we strongly recommend getting a local IP
anyway. The fact that a large number of the internet users use local
searches routinely means that your site may be getting dropped from
legitimate and focused searches.
It's worth noting that Google.com does not offer a "US Sites Only"
button, so by being registered on a local IP you get the best of both
worlds - you don't get filtered out by either US customers or those
from your home country. Note: some smaller portals in the UK (and
elsewhere) filter by the country extension (like co.uk) instead of
IP, but I know of none in Canada that filter by .ca.- it's always
IP.
One easy way to find a web host that is using local IP's is to do
a search for a web host with "Canadian Sites Only" and only choose
someone on that list. Since they may have more than one upstream server,
it's still important to check with them to make sure that they put
you on a local IP address. If they don't know what you are talking
about, then you likely need a different host.
It would be a real shame to have a great website and then have your
most highly qualified customers not being able to see it.
* Origninally published at McAnerin.com
About the Author:
Since it's inception, McAnerin
Networks Inc. has been highly regarded as an ethical, responsible
and professional corporation that prefers to work together with others
rather than creating opposition. Visit McAnerin
today!
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| From
the Forum: |
| Search Engine Demerits for 404's? |
I am seeing 404 errors in my web stats that indicate that engines are looking for the old pages. Will we be penalized for these error pages? I understand that oversubmission of sites is punishable by banishment to Never Never Land. What is the best way to handle the problem?
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