Google has always maintained that for a site to appear in “pages from that country” results (i.e. - pages from India or Pages from UK), it needs to be hosted in that country. This meant that for a site to appear in the search results of Google.co.in with the “Pages from India” option selected, it needed to be hosted in India.
A few months back, this criterion was diluted and sites that were either hosted in India or had a country specific domain (.co.in, .in) would both show up in the country specific results.

Since the last few days, we’ve noticed another change. Sites which are neither hosted in India nor have a country specific TLD are now showing up in the Google “pages from India” results if their WHOIS data shows that the registrant is from India. This just shows that Google is not only reviewing but also giving much more importance to the WHOIS data.

So what happens if one uses an identity protector and does not reveal his/her name in the WHOIS? Also what happens to a TLD with a foreign registration address (i.e. - Suppose I own a .co.in domain but my registrant address shows I stay in the US)? There will be a lot of people who must’ve noticed the recent Google changes and must be working out ways to use these factors to improve their site’s search engine placement… The future sure looks interesting!!!

I have been working with search engines for over 7 years now and never ever has search marketing created as much buzz in India as it is creating now and I believe a major reason for that is Google.

In India, even after the economic liberalization, many people still refer to toothpaste as Colgate and to a chocolate as Cadbury… Now people have started referring to search engines as Google… any search engine. The term Googling is associated with searching for anything using any available search engine.

The two factors that have made Google synonymous with search are -
1 - Their focus on their core activity, i.e. - search
2 - Their marketing tactics, right from their early days

While Cadbury and Colgate took years to build such a strong brand, Google became a huge phenomenon virtually over time… much like China did actually - I woke up one morning and everything was made in China!!! Similarly, one day, everyone just started using Google instead of Yahoo or Altavista.

I don’t know how many people agree with my observations in this post (would love to get some feedback btw), but I strongly believe that Google has done a lot to popularize SEO in India… what do you think?

I, often come across question regarding search marketing in India. The most common question is “how many searches are carried out in India” and “To what extent could I, as an Indian company targeting the domestic market, leverage search marketing to help me increase my bottom line”.

Today, on 7th December 2006, there was an article in The Financial Express that gives a few India-centric figures.

They say that there are 40,000 advertisers targeting Indian we users, who conduct over 1 billion searches a month. Out of this, over 300 million searches carry ads, eventually resulting in 5 million click-thrus every month.

IAMAI estimates 37 million internet users in India and a majority of them search online, making them perfect targets for search marketing.

So I guess, paid search marketing has finally come of age in India.