Country Specific Google Results

[identity]

Does anyone have any stats (preferred) on users selecting Google results segmented to their country? For instance, users in the UK (France, Japan, etc.) selecting the "Pages from the UK" option to limit results to country based sites?

Or if not hard stats, at least any international users care to comment?

Cheers,

Brian

~identity

[AndieF]

Hi Brian,

Great question. It's not one that I can answer with hard facts or stats, but I can do so anecdotally.

A few years ago "Pages from the UK" was prominent on the UK's Google homepage. Nowadays, you have to conduct a search across "The Web", then go to "Search Tools", then go to "The Web" and change that  to say "Pages from the UK".

It is buried incredibly deep down, which suggests to me one of two things (perhaps both):-

1. Users simply don't use this service enough to make it worth promoting, it's there as an accidental discovery more than anything
2. Its on it's deathbed and they're silently killing it. This seems likely as Google Web Search has been killing features that people didn't use to provide a clear UX (for example Instant Previews)

I hope that helps!

• Andie

[LynnPatchett]

Hi Brian,

I also don't have any hard stats, but I think these kind of results are somewhat baked into the normal localised and personalised results which are pretty much default now.

Particularly for non english language searches and google.xx country domains the normal results are already slanted towards 'pages in xxx' and 'pages from xxx'. Differences do exist, but not to the degree they did a few years ago in my experience.

Andie is right, they have made the 'pages from xx' a lot less prominent in the UI than it was, but I think that is because it is needed less now since the normal serps are doing a better job of returning user/country relevant data.

[identity]

Thanks for the responses.

Yes, I've read about and have seen how Google has buried the function and agree that I think it may be a combination of downgrading/deprecating it as well as perhaps it is needed less with their capabilities to serve up results based on personalization, social signals, improved geo-targeting, etc.

Cheers