Difference between Google US & non-US

[Guest]

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[RyanKent]

Google US has the highest standards. Panda and other changes are made in the US first and the changes are watched. After a period of time (often months) the changes are then rolled out to other countries.

Another factor is the competition for Google.com is many times higher then most other countries. If you use Google.fr you are mostly competing with French focused companies, where in Google.com you are often competing with the entire world.

I want to also be clear as to exactly which version of Google is being seen outside the US. I live in the US but my clients from Canada inform me when they type in "Google.com" they are redirected to "Google.ca" so they are seeing Google Canada results, not Google.com results. You want to verify whether that is the case for you. Additionally, when you are using different pc's and accounts to perform searches, the search patterns used on each pc, each account and browser affect your personalized search. Be sure to turn off personalized search to ensure the comparisons are accurate.

[Guest]

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[RyanKent]

Can you share the keywords you are using to see the results you described along with the URL to your site?

[Guest]

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[RyanKent]

I see the following results:

In google.com.au your site ranks as #1 for "chat online"

In google.com your site ranks as #1 for "chat rooms online"

In Google.com your site is not in the top 50 results for "chat online".

I am physically located in the US.

There is a tremendous amount of search results for "chat online" such as businesses with high authority sites inviting customers to chat online, news sites sharing online chats, etc. It seems the removal of the term "rooms" not online takes away the EMD ranking bonus, but opens the search query up to a very wide variety of interpretation.

It's interesting because even on the "chat online" search the term "room" is shown in bold so Google understands when a search is performed for "chat online" users are often looking for a chat room.

Your page is decently optimized for the term. I am hesitant to suggest any changes as you do rank in the #1 slot for other searches. You also have numerous links to the page using "chat online" as anchor text. It seems this matter requires deeper investigation. A few things I would recommend:

1. You have a serious SEO issue in that your site is available in both www and non-www formats.

http://chat-rooms-online.com/

http://www.chat-rooms-online.com/

The above two URLs both work. You should redirect the non-www URL to the www version, and ensure all links use the www version.

2. Your copyright date in the footer is for 2010. I would recommend using php to automatically update the year portion so it shows as Copyright 2010-(current year).

3. Your home page is repeatedly providing a status code of "304 Not Modified". The normal header response for a web page is "200 All Ok". Please check with your web developer or host to determine why the 304 code is being returned.