Regionality

Regionality is the favouring of "local" sites in search results for generic terms and is most noticeable with Google.

Not long ago on the regional English language Googles the top results for generic search terms were invariably dominated by pages from the US so searchers would have to append a regional qualifier to find local results.

With increasing numbers of regional pages turning up for generic terms it seems the days where a page could rank worldwide for a generic search term appear to be ending.

The extent of this "regionalisation" of results appears to depend largely on the amount of "local" competition, taking "web design" as an example we'll probably find more UK pages top twenty for "web design" on G.co.uk than say NZ pages on G.com.nz.

The order in which UK results feature for a generic term in "web search" appears to correspond closely to how they appear in a "Pages from the UK" search, which in turn are closely based on "Pages from the UK" allinanchor results.

It's not clear if "local" anchor text plays a part or whether it's simply down to the receiving site being "local" as to date there's little sign that regional links help a foreign page rank on a national Google.

For further reading on regionality we recommend: