I have noticed this for quite some time now that I get a lot of German sites in Google searches although “Das Web” instead of “Seiten auf Deutsch” is selected. Wondering if that was different a year ago or so.

To compare I tried to search “1stein” on google.de?q=1stein and on google.com?q=1stein. On the former even pages from some strange forums with somebody called “1stein” are listed before my site (not that I think mine is so important, but a search to “1stein” maybe also should show the corresponding domains early). In fact it only appears at the end of the last page. On the international site my page appears at position 5 though!

I am wondering whether it’s not often the case that you miss good (non-local) results because of this stupid localization. When looking at http://www.google.de I wouldn’t expect this at all compared to http://www.google.com. At least they should clarify on this. But we all know anyway about the position of Google today to lead people to sites they want to. Today it’s the language, who knows which criteria they follow otherwise. Just because I have paranoia it doesn’t mean nobody is after me

Just noticed: MSN is the same. Searching for “search” gives results in Germany and Switzerland first. Yahoo.com first shows the American sites, interestingly their own site on position 2 (only CNET search is better). Google though finds itself on position 3 after MSN and search.com. Wondering if there is research done to identify search result manipulation. Might be an interesting research topic.