Google: From Geocentrism to Regionalism: How Google gets rank first?

II – 2 From Geocentrism to Regionalism: How Google gets rank first?

Google.com and it will be for sure a surprise for you is not the most visited search engine on the web, it is in fact Yahoo.com according to Alexa web.

Here is the ranking of the 50 most visited websites in the world for 2008 filtered with the keywords Yahoo and Google:

Rank	Site
1	Www.yahoo.com
2	Www.google.com
10	Www.yahoo.co.jp
14	Www.google.co.in
15	Www.google.de
19	Www.google.fr
21	Www.google.co.uk
26	Www.google.co.br
29	Www.google.it
34	Www.google.es
35	Www.google.co.jp
42	Www.google.com.mx

As we can see Google.com is not the first one it is in fact Yahoo.com and Yahoo.co.jp is taking the next position ranked in the list.

What makes in fact Google being the first search engine in the world is the accumulation of his domain names and the translation of his home pages in almost all the languages of the world.

This is in fact a very young and simple strategy that Google adapted here. One year and a half after his creation Google was already available in 13 languages.

Why at that time his competitors did not do the same?(Actually only Yahoo survived to the Google's wave during the last decade). Mainly because his main world competitor: Yahoo has an interface which is too heavy to translate and need dedicated people(such as local

people) to make the updates. Restricted it Yahoo to a mere webpage as Google do Yahoo would have changed all his policy.

Google did in fact what no other search engines did: gathering minorities.

Nowadays Google customized his interface for more than 138 countries. The only countries which are not included yet and which are for the biggest one:

Bhoutan, Birmania, Surinam, Burkina Faso, Yemen, Togo, Cameroon, Chyprus, Sierra Leone, Syria, Liberia, Madagascar, Mali, Niger, Gabon.

Google's service is customized for almost all the world(including islands and countries such as Groenland which has around 50,000 inhabitants).

Google is going far further than touching each country individually it goes as well within regions, as an example it is providing a customized interface to several regions in France:

Here France has been divided especially for five regions:

- Bretagne: http://www.google.com/intl/br/

- Corse: http://www.google.com/intl/co/

- Langue d'oc:http://www.google.com/intl/oc/

- Catalogne:http://www.google.com/intl/ca/

- Pays Basques: http://www.google.com/intl/eu/

We can ask us the question: is it really important to divide so deeply a specific country?

Taking in account that such minorities(Bretagne and Corse) are very proud to be what they are, good chances that they will move from .com to .com/intl/br/ or .com/intl/co/ in order to have a recognition(for example France government is not recognizing those five regions for political reasons). Now we should ask us what they will chose between Google which care of them and provide them a dedicated interface and Yahoo which provide them only the national one(when it has it)?

I unfortunately do not have the Internet traffic for those regions but I evaluate this strategy(recognizing minorities) as a very interesting one. Very hard to do for other sectors but for this one I have high presumptions that it works very well.

As we all know it is very hard to be a pure Geocentric company and local modifications are often needed in order to enter in a specific market: Google is not an exception to this rule.