GOOGLE PAGES FROM THE UK. BROKEN. AGAIN

Paul Carpenter 1st January 1970
Paul Carpenter

Google are brilliant (anyone would be, if they had access to thousands of PHds...) Despite the brainpower and computing power at their disposal, they're still more than capable of getting things wrong. And here in the UK we seem to suffer a little bit more than our counterparts over the pond.

OK. What are you moaning about now?

If you search on Google.co.uk for site:www.clearsitemarketing.co.uk - it should show you all of the pages that it currently holds in its index. It's a neat trick if you want to get some idea of various aspects of your site's quality.

Clearsite Marketing: Pages from the Web

Nothing wrong there then. There's a full index of everything on the site.

But! Try the same search with 'pages from the UK' selected and this is the result:

Clearsite Marketing: Pages from the UK

According to the results, the homepage of our site isn't even indexed. Now we know this is actually a lot of rot, because we show up in the rankings for our core phrase "website marketing" (not the top 10 yet, before you start - this is still a new site!). We can also search for specific phrases in our site and find the relevant pages indexed and ranking perfectly well.

So - it is just Google's 'site:' command that isn't working. For most people this will make no difference. As part of our work however, it makes analysis and competitor research very difficult to carry out.

Today's Moral

We'll be taking this up with Google, but in the meantime we advise you to take a little care when using Google's 'pages from the UK' feature. Once it's fixed - you'll be the first to know!

Notes and Queries...

I have a client who has exeperienced their website going missing from the 'pages in the uk' part of google. They appear fine in google.com, google.co.uk when 'pages from the web' is selected. The keywords put into the search field are knowledge-counsel. There site is no where to be found when 'pages in teh UK' radio button is selected.

Can anyone advise on this issue? any help would be greatly appreciated. guyhowle@bamboo-media.com
Guy Howle 16th August 2007
Hi Guy

I'll send you an email in case you don't get to check back on here, but generally the problem arises if the site isn't hosted on a server physically located in the UK.

It isn't a hard and fast rule though - sometimes you find sites with servers located overseas ranking on 'pages from the UK' searches. There have been several glitches in the past where .com domains have been banished for no identifiable reason, and sometimes even sites with .co.uk domain names that are hosted and registered here seem to suffer.

I see that bamboo-media has a connection with Thailand... any chance that your clients' sites are on servers over there rather than within the UK?
Paul Carpenter 16th August 2007
I tried this for one of our clients

URL = www.google.co.uk

Search for = site:marshalls-seeds.co.uk

"The web" = 701 hits

"Pages from the UK" = 703 hits

Search for = site:marshalls-seeds.co.uk "Godetia Show Mix"

"The web" = 2 hits (I reckon that is all there are)

"Pages from the UK" = ZERO :(

Further, searching for just

Search for = "Godetia Show Mix"

(including the quotes to force a search for that phrase)

"The web" = 2 hits

"Pages from the UK" = ZERO

so it doesn't look to be just the SITE: attribute

This is hosted on servers in the UK with Ision, subsequently bought by Energis and now Cable & Wireless

Whois shows:
Registrant type = UK Limited Company
Registrar = a .CO.UK domain name :(
Name servers = ditto .CO.UK domain names :(

FWIW the IP should not be shared with anything as it has an SSL.

Perplexed, and any ideas would be appreciated
Kristen 3rd September 2007
 
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