Thread: Crippled version of Google?

A client called me today and asked why his site wasn’t appearing in Google. I had created his humble site www.nbtrans.ie a few months earlier. So I opened google.ie and searched for noel brennan transport with the ‘pages from Ireland’ option selected. Lo and behold, there he was, first up. That was news to him. So I searched with ‘the web’ as the option and there he was again, first on the list.

Thinking later, I remembered him using the google search on Eircom.net when he was showing me competitor websites. So I wondered could the result be different in an ‘enhanced by google’ search on Eircom.net. He didn’t appear, not anywhere. So I did a bit more digging and started to notice other differences.

Naturally I double-checked. I even tried resetting my google preferences. Different results, not just search-result order, but number of results found. Take a look at the table here, see what I mean.

Digging further, I tried the same searches on iol.ie. Same results as eircom. Could the Irish ISPs bet getting a limited search? So I tried for my friend Noel on tiscali.co.uk. No sign of him, but similar results as Eircom and IOL.

The consistent difference between the ‘native’ google search and the Eircom/IOL version of google was the number of results. The ‘native’ google always had more results found. Which leads me to the question – is there a crippled (limited) version of google search for search partners?

Always been like that Conor, think they use a G API to get their search results.

I know they use an API to get the search result. But why would it be in Google's interest to have partners (including AOL) to have a poorer and less relevant search experience?

It has been suggested elsewhere that it's a result of Google's supplemental index?

Eircom have routed their traffic through Germany before.
Maybe this has a knock on affect on the search..

Doubt it's that. Same result when using AOL.com. Interesting that this thread now shows up in both main google and eircom/iol but my clients site still doesn't show on the partner sites. Seems to reinforce the supplemental index theory.

That site would seem to fit the supplemental profile, though if G was filtering out supplemental pages to its partner searches it could hardly be described as "crippled"....

Is it not showing result using aol.com...???But one thing is was wondering why would be Google's interest to have partnersto have a poorer and less relevant search experience? Its really shocking...