Businessweek had a series of informative articles about search giant Google. Of particular interest to international search was the October 2, 2009 article "Google Search Guru Singhal: We will Try Outlandish Ideas:"http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/techbeat/archives/2009/10/google_search_g.html.

In that article, author Rob Hof asked Google's search quality group's Amit Singhal the following question:

Q (Hoff): Anything you’ve focused on more recently than freshness?

A (Singhal): "Localization. We were not local enough in multiple countries, especially in countries where there are multiple languages or in countries whose language is the same as the majority country.

So in Austria, where they speak German, they were getting many more German results because the German Web is bigger, the German linkage is bigger. Or in the U.K., they were getting American results, or in India or New Zealand. So we built a team around it and we have made great strides in localization. And we have had a lot of success internationally.

I added emphasis to the "the German linkage is bigger" quote because this is a common question in regards to international search and it is surprising to see how few accept the concept that regional linkage can effect rankings within that territory. The geographic location of links have an effect on your regional rankings.