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In an ongoing and constantly updated WebmasterWorld thread, it appears some people are reporting major shifts in Google UK. People are saying that the search results dramatically changed. But some suspect that the UK specific filter that makes Google UK, umm, UK specific, was turned off.
Here are some of the reports in the thread:
I have noticed that all of a sudden my rankings are back to when caffine done it's first roll out. It was temporary but this time I have noticed that big sites have dropped as well but in other industries. The .co.uk rankings are very similar to .com. Anyone else see this?
not sure what they have done today in the UK but my traffic on one site has gone crazy, i hope they dont turn it back.
Senior member, InternetHeaven said that Google does occasional flip the UK filter switch off. He said in response to the UK results looking like US results:
This happens from time to time. It's like the UK filter is turned off for a bit. Worst still is the AU infiltration! Every so often the UK Google results are crammed with AU results - now that's always a dark day for us...
About a year ago, there was a major Google UK shakeup, which resulted in an explanation from Matt Cutts on the state of Google UK. Just two days ago, Matt Cutts did a new video on the UK Google results. Here it is:
So is something up?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Comments:
W.Haden-Homer
06/24/2010 11:43 am
Losing this facility has made it very difficult to source components and information that are UK. friendly. I personally feel swamped with american info which most of the time I can`t use.
Andries
09/01/2010 12:57 pm
Why try to let Google GUESS what mix of country specific VS international results to return? How can a computer ever guess better which results I prefer? Just give me a simple radio button, please google!!! By trying to be too clever here, you are not serving your users. No amount of clever algorithmic guessing will ever give the same result as a simple radio button allowing the user to choose between global and local results only.