[Developer]

Google Results Different Outside The US

Just came from a session of our SES London show dealing with language issues and how search engines create listings for their non-US sites.

Google suggested that it's doing more to show different results to those outside the US, if you use non-US versions of Google.

In other words, say you do a search at Google.com across the entire web, then use Google Germany to do the same search across the entire web. Traditionally, the results have been the same except for some possible minor variances.

Today, Google implied that the Google Germany search would now be more skewed toward favoring German related sites -- even if you hadn't specifically used the filter to German sites option. In other words, nothing would be filtered, but because you are using the German site, those sites might get a preference.

Google even implied that if you were to go to Google.com from outside the US, the results there might be more customized to your location, even when searching the entire web -- though likely to less degree than if you searched the entire web on Google Germany.

I keep saying implied because they stopped short of saying they actually do this, phrasing things like "you can imagine that we might" or "it wouldn't be surprising if." Qualifications aside, it explains some increasing reports I've heard from others that searching the entire web via Google but from outside the US brings back different results.