Huge difference in search results depending on the country?

[sbrault74]

I have some keywords ranking in pages 2 and 3 in the US but for instance, in Canada, the same keywords rank somewhere between pages 15 and 25.

When I check my US rankings, I use a Windows VPS located in the US. When I check my rankings in Canada, I use a computer physically located in Canada.

Basically, about 80% of my rankings have gone away for countries other than the US. I have not set any geographical target for my website in GWT.

How come there is such a big difference in search results across different countries?

[OlegKorneitchouk]

A lot depends on the keywords being searched and also on the backlinks the website has. G may deem your website to be better suited for a US audience (based on content, keywords and linking domains) than the Canadian audience (who's serps will contain many more .ca sites and those targeting Canada in GWT).

[sbrault74]

I am fascinated by the fact that on Google.ca, I am outranked by .co.uk websites as well as really thin content sites.

7 results out of the top 10 have literally tens of thousands of spammy backlinks.

[simon_realbuzz]

As Oleg rightly points out, there are a number of factors which can impact on your ability to rank well in different countries. To rank well in a number of countries you would need to build links from each of those countries. I suspect the bulk of your links are probably from US based sites and therefore you rank well there but no in other locations.

There are of course other factors which come into play, particularly relevance, and Google may deem your content is more relevant to a US audience than other countries.

[OlegKorneitchouk]

One thing to note is that Google usually pushes all its updates to the US first, then if they are successful, pushes those updates to other countries.

.ca could be using some older algorithms that are easy to spam (although there is plenty of that in .com as well).

[sbrault74]

Well I do hope this is the case because I'm outranked by really sh*tty websites. Lots of them are 2-3 pages websites hosted for free on webs.com. Some of these pages have been taken down by webs.com yet they are still ranking in the top 10 after 2-3 months.