If you run a website, you’re probably keeping an eye on where you rank in Google. A frustrating task made even harder by the fact that Google now use a lot of geo-targetting to determine search results. The upshot being a search from the UK on google.com will show a different set of results to one from the USA on google.com. Grrr.
For example, I have a non-commercial package holiday website that I host over the pond in the USA and obviously I am targetting the term “package holiday” or “package holidays”. It’s relatively new and I’ve been keeping an eye on Google to see how it ranks. I want it to rank on google.com and google.co.uk and the initial results were encouraging. But I found something very useful this week…
I am in the UK, and when I go to google.com and search, the site is on page 2 or 3 of the results – not ideal. But as it turns out, if I lived in the USA and did the same search, Google would show me different results because it feels certain sites will be more relevant to me as a US resident. So how do I see what a US searcher sees?
The solution is to use the Google Adpreview Tool that comes as part of the Adwords system for Google advertisers, but also rather usefully available to anyone as a stand-alone application. It allows you to enter a country, a version of Google and your keywords and replicate what a user in that country will see. It will even let you drill down by “region” in your selected country as results are often State or Regionally delivered. How neat is that! Works like a dream.
And better still, I found I ranked #2 and #3 in the USA on Google.com for my two key phrases (though I didn’t check in every US State!) 
Now I just have to battle the vacation/holiday anomaly. Come on Americans, use real English and not some anglocised French cobblers!