Change in how Google serves results by IP?

Normally I expect Google UK to deliver:

1. International results that match Google.com, by selecting “Search - the web”
2. Results only from UK domains and UK hosted sites, by selecting “Search - pages from the UK”

However, last night I found the supposed international results differ markably from Google.com.

It looks as if Google could now be serving results according to the IP linkage of the sites, and how relevant that linkage is according to UK IPs and domains.

The reason I suggest that is because my business site - Britecorp - normally ranks pretty well on UK searches for internet marketing.

I roughly target that term, after John Scott pointed out to me that the keyphrase converted a heck of a lot better than ranking for search engine optimization.

On international searches, Britecorp usually ranks around 60-80 for internet marketing, but I’m fine with that - I’m still a very new company, and a sole trader as well - it’s a toe-hold to expand upon as my company also expands and grows.

However, when you now select “the web” on Google UK for internet marketing, Britecorp is listed anywhere between 9-15.

This doesn’t match either UK only, or international results. Therefore it has to be a mix of both by some method.

The reason I suspect that IP linkage comes into it is because other companies, such as Clickz, Wilson, and Webuildpages are all well ranked on those results – companies I know also have good linkage from UK sites and UK IP’s.

If so, this is a very interesting – and potentially very good move – for geographic search. It’s not something I’ve noticed before - certainly not on this scale.

The only problem is that my business site is somewhat out of date while I built up a new infrastructure of new services to offer – so now there is a greater onus on my to update the site as quickly as possible, and take advantage of this move by Google.