Country Specific Searches and Paid Search Ads
A very interesting featured thread at Search Engine Watch forums named Google places “Dummy Bidders” in Regional Search artificially raise required bids discusses a topic, I believe is very important. The poster says that when he does a search in Google and specifically requests that Google only show results within a certain country (i.e. Australia) it does so, but only on the organic side. It only shows Australian hosted, domain name and so on sites in the organic results, but it does not restrict the PPC ads based on those factors.
Of course, the PPC advertiser has the option of excluding countries and regions. But what about the searcher? Isn’t it all about the searcher?
I like how Patrick Berry puts it in this reply;
I as the searcher have made a decision that I only wont pages servered from Australia (in this example). The advertiser is been excluded by the searcher. Not the search engine. Thats a big difference.
Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.
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Barry Schwartz, Search Engine Roundtable Search Forum Coverage – Barry Schwartz is the Editor of Search Engine Roundtable and President of RustyBrick, Inc., a Web services firm specializing in customized online technology that helps companies decrease costs and increase sales.
