When I google “larp” in New Zealand sites I don’t get the NZLARPS website. Not on the first page, not on any of the pages.
Perhaps because it’s a .org domain? Any way to get around this? We should be at the top of the list by rights, given the number of times larp and New Zealand are mentioned on the site.
Maybe the server is physically located outside of NZ? I know many .com sites are correctly identified as being in the appropriate country.
Maybe we need to specify New Zealand when we register nzlarps.org with Google?
The server is in Texas, but Google will be well aware of who they are and that they do international sites.
If I Google New Zealand larp I get quite good results.
Last month there were nine people that came to nzlarps.org from a search engine. They were searching for:
capulet and montague colors
larp weapon shop
live action role playing equipment
live action vampire
new zealand larp
simple larp
stargate larp
vampire live action fantasy role playing
www.nzlarps.org
interesting …
But if you go to www.google.co.nz, click “pages from New Zealand” and google “larp” you don’t get us.
Personally I use that “pages from” function a lot.
That will be the cause, then.
Google uses GeoIP to turn the server’s IP address into a country code, and then store this against the page. Hence the NZLarps pages are recorded as in the USA, so the ‘pages from New Zealand’ doesnt find them. If you put ‘New Zealand’ in the google search box it can find them of course as then its doing a text search on all site.
I use the ‘pages from New Zealand’ option a lot too, but I dont know of any way around this one. Even the google site manager interface doesnt allow you to specify the Country for your site.
It’s a bit of a shame, we should be topping the results to be a first-point-of-contact for kiwis interested in larp.
I used to use “pages from New Zealand” but found I got better results if I either typed “New Zealand” into the search box or let Google work its magic on knowing where I’m searching from. I never realised this was the reason, though. Damn.