[Peter W]

Which one do you use?

Is there any information available on which one most people in the UK use?

If you were only tracking your site rankings on one of them, which one would you choose?

[CPLTD]

Google tracks your location and gives you the site thats dedicated to your country so if you type in www.google.com and your based in the UK then you will be redirected to www.google.co.uk

If your looking for more site statistics then you should take a look at alexa www.alexa.com

[Cracking Media]

Originally Posted by Peter W

Which one do you use?

Is there any information available on which one most people in the UK use?

If you were only tracking your site rankings on one of them, which one would you choose?

Hi Peter

I don't know of any source of information as to which one most people in the UK use. I think by default the .com version is used if you use the Google toolbar, unless you elect the .co.uk.

I think you will find that google.co.uk will lean more towards .co.uk domains, whilst google.com will favour .com domains. So it depends really on where you want to been seen best. However, it is thought that by having a .com website which is hosted in the UK you should do well on both. I have never tested that out but it seems a reasonable claim.

Hope that helps.

Peter

[RayB]

Great question!

I use both for checking rankings, but for actual search I use .co.uk (the web) mostly. I only apply the uk filter if I don't get the results I need.

I don't know (but would like to know) how many UK users use .com - but I suspect it will be a minority with many browser toolbar shipping with a google search bar set to .co.uk by default

If I were only using one to track my rankings it would be .co.uk (the web)

[Fuzzy]

Fuzzy uses google.co.uk

[CPLTD]

ouch think I misunderstood the question there sorry I search for results from UK generally.

[Cracking Media]

Originally Posted by Fuzzy

Fuzzy uses google.co.uk

So Fuzzy - do you also use fuzzy logic for your searching?

Peter

[RayB]

I'll move this to SEO - I think you'll get more answers

[sally]

I always use .co.uk unless I am searching for info on things like seo or directories.

[admagic]

One very important thing to consider, is how you check what they can see in google in another country on ADWORDS

So if you want to see for example , what is being advertised in the USA and you select geotarget of the states with your campaign it is NOT sufficient to use google.com because google still uses your ip address to decide where you are - to decide what to display


So you have to look for what are called "proxy servers"...that is websites that will take your request then radiate it to google using an IP address in the states.

Kids use these proxy server sites to look at facebook from hosts that ban facebook!!
And serious spammers (and hackers) bounce back and forth off several east european servers so that they can be effectively untraceable

But they are also useful to see what adwords is displaying in other regions.

If you google "proxy server" and a location..eg atlanta, you can generally find sites in a remote country that will allow you to see what those users see.

And you can also use that to see what people see in say london, if you are based in manchester by bouncing off a london proxy server

So if you really want to see what the yanks see, start looking at proxy servers.
( or set up an anonymous proxy script - on an ISP in the states behind your own site)