regional variations

[andy]

i can goto yahoo.com and find myself first for something, but sometimes i ask someone from america to go, they find me a place or 2 down, so i stop and wonder about this for a while...

i try the uk site again there i am, i try the dot com there i am...
So i ask someone else from from another country or another place to go to the same site type the same phraze in and they get slightly different results yet again ?
Does it vary from state to state and country to country even though its the same search engine URL and search phraze

Are there regional variations on keywords even though its the same search engine? and how big are they

[clasione]

The first thing that comes to mind is the possibility that both users are viewing another datacenter.. Even though you are using the same engine, it's possible that some results can be from one datacenter and the other results are from another..

Also, an update will propergate at different times for different places..

I know that this happens often with Google...

[seo_expert]

Google maintains all its database at different Data Centers at 4 different locations.

So every time you search on Google it is possible that at each time you access different data center database.

This is called Google Dancing.

Also some times you must have seen that on one conputer your site's PR is 4 and another it is PR3. the behind is the same reason.

To check your PR across all the Data center you can use PageRank Tool (http://www.pageranktool.net/)

This is really helpful.

[spondishy]

OK... So if you're using a virtual host, would this in theory affect your standings based on the geography. EG I use a UK host. I know my results are slightly better in yahoo.co.uk than .com...

But its not worth worrying about.

[andy]

spondishy
yea you must see similar results to me as my default is uk

but ive asked people from different us states, from east to west coast and they all showed me different results, i guess its just a minor thing and not worth worrying about to much

[andy]

adding to this

i was origionally talking about yahoo but google data centers got brought into it

do yahoo have different data centers?