Secrets of successful websites

Location


Google is working very hard to improve its service to searchers, webmasters and pay-per-click clients by trying to identify where sites are, and from where searchers are looking.

I have just typed "Indian restaurant" into Google to illustrate the difficulties.  The first three results in SERPs are 180 miles away, 210 miles and 215 miles.  The nearest in the top ten is sixth but that is over thirty miles away and probably too far for what a searcher would almost certainly be looking for when using those terms

Admittedly the searcher would realise what he had to do and qualify his search term by adding the name of the town, borough or county he was looking for but Google wants to do better than that.  (I’ve just added the requisite qualifier to my search and been given exactly what I was looking for.)

Presently it’s all a bit hit-and-miss:

1.    There is some clue from a searcher’s IP address (which is one of only a few pieces of information internet protocols allow to be made available from searchers’ particulars) about where the searcher may be and therefore the area he may be looking for.  IP addresses, though, are often dynamic (that is they change every time the computer logs on).  The only real information is therefore the location of the ISP which allocated the number.

2.    Computers that have paid for static IP addresses enable a check to be made via the WHOIS information about the postal address of the domain at that IP address.

3.    Additional helpful information may be supplied by the device itself.  Mobile phones, for instance, are easily pin-pointed by the mobile cell they have connected to.

On the other side the website’s owners details or wishes can be optimised to quite a good extent but again the means may be limited to where a searcher is looking and how much detail he has given.

In its pay-per-click service, for instance, Google offers fairly accurate location opportunities (while simultaneously reminding its users of the restrictions involved).  Nevertheless it does offer to place the ads within postcodes or within a radius of fixed location.  Searchers looking for an accountant in Gloucester would be advised to use "Accountant Gloucester" as its search term but if it doesn’t Google will only show a relevant pay-per-click advert within the prescribed location as best in can so that the advertiser shouldn’t have to pay for clicks from a searcher in Inverness looking for an accountant in Inverness even though his search term was merely "accountant".
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