How is google.com different from google.gr, google.de ...

I mean I know they are actually sitting on different ip's but,
how come they don't have the same results

I was looking for "chios greece" and I am on
8th place on google.com
18th on google.gr
9th on google.de
9th on google.at
11th on google.es
...

note: I was using the "web search" option on all of them

Is there a different search index on each one
or are they slow to update the search index ?
My feeling is that the "de" and "at" have my position of about a month ago
but the "gr" one has my position of 6 months ago
could they be so slow at getting the new index ?

I had noticed the different Googles gave me different results, to be honest I just assumed as their datacenters update PR differently so do their search sites.

It does pose an interesting conversation. I haven't noticed a trend where there's a pattern - might be for an interesting study.

The different Google sites seem to be more focused on national search results. If you search for something generic like 'hardware' on Google.com and Google.nl you'll see mostly Dutch pages in the results on google.nl. Also the ads on the right side of the search results are Dutch and not English.

They are way more than just older/newer versions of the index!

http://ventureskills.wordpress.com/2007/03/15/geo-targeting-for-search-engines/
Geo targeting is a big business these days, and making sure your in regional and local searches.

yeah have the same experience check this dutch result:

http://www.google.nl/search?hl=nl&q=Trampoline+&btnG=Google+zoeken&meta=
the result for Berg toys is ok for the dutch version from that website (arround no. 5)

if I try the same search at .com I need to search where I can't find the result not within the top 100.

I think we can call the this results a local flavor :)

but important is that a site in Greek language has a high position at google.gr because most of the visitors will use this search engine. If you have a English language site you need to work much harder :)

On the other hand: it is often much easier to find places to *eeehhh*spam* with your links in the English language, like directories and the like, making it often easier to get a good ranking on the G.com

yes right this is a plus with English language websites, but I'm not sure if this will always work. I promote my template site about more than a year and never got more than 100 visitors a day

I guess there is a lot of competition with templates, and maybe also duplicate content penalties since there are a lot of sites selling these exact same templates as an affiliate.

the template is an image, but maybe you're right that also the same category link etc. are the reason of less organic traffic

I think I know what you are saying, the site in question http://hausfay.com is ONLY in English so it has to work much harder to get a better position in the .gr rankings ? right ?

I meant to create some translations for Greek, German, Dutch, Italian, and what have you but never got the time to do it ... maybe this is a wake up call ...

Yes a Greek version would help to get a good ranking at google.gr

I think the problem here is not the language but the amount of text content, maybe your customer can write some local travel guides. btw travel websites are very easy to promote at google (there are so much)

Talking of regional seo, a good thing to do is hosting your web site in Greece too. Google identifies the ip location of your host and takes it as a hint. I suppose it does not have big weight, but it helps anyway.

Ha Ha the Customer is ME actually (its a family run business), And if you have not noticed already I am not good at writing content, it takes me a lot of time, that is why I never got around to doing it ;) any tips on content writing ?

But let me clear something, I am not actually complaining for the rankings, last year all my bookings were done through the internet or phone calls (phone numbers where found from the site though) and this year the rankings are actually much much better but everyone wants better rankings right ?

@Olaf what do you mean
"travel websites are very easy to promote at google (there are so much)"

yeah thats absolutely true, in the begin finalwebsites.com was hosted in Belgium, I got always mails from Belgium people to help them with their websites :(