Does Google's algorithm work the same in every country?

[david.smith.segarra]

I can't help but feel this is a silly question! but does Google algorithm work exactly the same throughout all countries?

I run a few sites in the UK and a couple in Spain but can't help but feel that my Spanish sites are harder to rank for.

The sites that rank the best are business directories in Spain... whereas here in the UK you'd be lucky to find one on page one..

[Martijn_Scheijbeler]

Cool question, the answer is already given and is NO. Google is rolling out the bigger algorithmic updates per region or per country. For example the first version(s) of the Panda update were only released for the regions speaking English. After that they deployed it to several european countries to see what the influence was there. In the end after a couple of months they deployed it worldwide.

I couldn't find it that fast but I thought there was also a video from Matt Cutts explaining that some elements of the algorithm only work for specific countries.

[gazzerman1]

Also Google will test out new algorithms and then roll them out country by country.

[vmialik]

No it does not, and here is one glimpse as to why:

"Google does indeed sometimes launch algorithms just for the English language but when possible, Google does try to launch them globally."

More info: http://searchengineland.com/googles-matt-cutts-we-fight-search-spam-in-40-localized-countries-internationalize-our-spam-algorithms-168785

Hope this helps