Google’s print advertising – should we believe it?
Google has spent a lot of money in the past few weeks on full page spreads and banner ads in many online and offline newspapers extolling the virtues or the search engine, localised search and security. Google’s latest print and banner ads reminded us of some of the flaws in the Google localisation search results.
What is Google Localised Search?
Depending on the keyword that you search for, Google Places will be offered up in the search results based on the IP address of your search device. So if you search “Lawyer”, “Florist” or “Plumber” in Portsmouth, you’ll see results based on businesses offering those services in the south Hampshire area. Excellent (if that’s what you are after).
The Google Print advertising
In one Google advertisement i saw in the London Evening Standard it states:
“You live in Brighton do you really need a plumber in New York?”
Then shows the image (below) of it taking a plumber 15 hours to get to you.
Google Print advertising
Google Localisation Search Flaws
We’ve written about this before (a couple of years ago), where US and Australian sites are given preference over UK sites for certain searches based on the lack of differentiation between the countries and presumably based on language. It hasn’t seemed to change, with Google telling us that they offer appropriate results for your searches, wherever you are, those claims need to be slightly tempered.
Well how about this Google? I need a restaurant on the South Bank, London. But i don’t want to travel across the globe to Melbourne to have dinner.
This may be picky, but Google make big claims – and this isn’t just about localised restaurant searches. There are a huge amount of US sites in UK searches thus skewing the results and adding confusion to the searcher.