How many Google's are there?

Have you ever wondered, how many Google search engines there are? Let me give you a hit there's more than one!

Google search for "the droids we're looking for"

If you've opened your web browser (chrome I hope) and typed in google.com you might have noticed it takes you straight to google.com.au (assuming you're in Australia and not using a proxy, sorry to all my non-Aussie readers you'll have to use your imagination for this post).

Google (and many other search engine companies) have localized versions of their search engines which can show you information specific to your language or location.

Not only is this an important factor to consider for SEO purposes it's nice to know how it all works to better help you find information when you search. For all you SEO experts and budding SEO gurus keep in mind, rankings for keywords will vary based on the different search engines and traffic to these search engines also differ.

Search engines can have one or more local counter parts.
- regular web search
- search only in pages written in that engine's local language
- search only in pages physically located in the engine's covered area (country)

The following example shows the options for Google Search Engines in Australia:

Google Australia
This makes a regular web search in Google Australia (google.com.au for "the web")

Google Australia (Australian)
This searches only in pages written in Australian

Google Australia (Australia)
This searches only in pages located in Australia (google.com.au for "pages from Australia")

Note: There's no official language of "Australian", I've added it in there as an example of what would happen, if Australia had it's own language.