Comments on: How www.microsoft.co.uk Could Make Millions on Google UK!

By: James Strong

James Strong — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 21:33:55 +0000

I did a search on Google.jp The results – Microsoft occupied the first 4 positions but was only broken by Wiki and then continued for another listing. Is it not here (Japan and maybe other areas that I didnt search) they are asserting their authority? Does Microsoft perceive itself to be such a superior brand that it doesnt need to optimise itself in the UK or other areas…..seeing as everytime the majority of computers are startd up we see their advertising. Now isnt that the best sort of advertising? It does raise the question – What if anything are we all missing in the UK and other European destinations (which the Japanese are seeing first) if we dont constantly see Microsoft at the top of Google advertising all and new services?

By: Tom R

Tom R — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 04:25:53 +0000

Does anyone know an approximate percentage breakdown of UK Google searches where the users actually search with the option for “pages from the UK” toggled? It would be interesting to know this, and how it applies to this deficit.

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By: Kev

Kev — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:38:00 +0000

What any website needs to do in order to be listed on google.co.uk (with the UK search filter applied) is either have a .co.uk domain suffix or a UK hosted server.

Microsoft don’t do either of these which is why they aren’t appearing, I just find it suprising that they haven’t done anything to remedy this when you consider the potential sales from targeted traffic which they are missing out on!

By: Austin WebKing - Website Design

Austin WebKing - Website Design — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 18:32:00 +0000

Yeah, I tried this on Google.de (Germany), filtering for only pages from Germany, and I saw similar responses. Results from vendors topped the list, but Microsoft proper didn’t come up. Oddly though, when I searched “ebay” and “Yahoo” on Google.uk (filtering only pages from the UK), I didn’t find similar results as with Microsoft. The search for Yahoo displayed uk.yahoo.com and the search for eBay delivered eBay financial info from Google finance, followed by the ebay.co.uk.

Microsoft has a .co.uk domain, with a redirect to http://www.microsoft.com/en/gb/. Think Google treats this as a doorway, thus penalizes?

By: weasel

weasel — Thu, 19 Jul 2007 11:03:00 +0000

The searches were performed on Google.co.uk (not the US google.com) with 'pages from the UK' selected.

Seeing as most of Microsoft's pages are hosted in the US, Google will serve results from pages hosted in the UK before serving pages hosted in the US.

Could this be the reason for this?

I don't think Google are stupid enough to block Microsoft in their SERPS.

I did a few checks and Google DOES serve Microsoft pages at the top of it's results when 'the web' is checked rather than 'pages from the UK'.
As I said before, it's because most Microsoft pages are hosted outside of the UK - they will not be included in the first few pages of the SERPS on a UK only search.

Ziz - SEM for FindaProperty.com

:)