Default to Australia campaign

Hi Everyone,

Perhaps the Australia Day weekend has gotten to me, but in my latest newsletter (only available to those on the JustLocal mailing list) has a tip which I thought was worth sharing with all Australians.

Perhaps we should even start a campaign. The "Default to Australia Campaign".

The following is a copy of the article.

A tip to find Australian treasure on Google

Have you searched Google to find you get thousands, if not millions of results returned.

I've often wondered about the value of selecting pages from Australia when using Google. Working on the JustLocal book project has made me realise just how valuable that option is.

However since I have to click one more time, I tend not to do it.

Do you feel the same way?

Here is a technique that will help.

Go to www.google.com.au
Select pages from Australia
Click Google Search

Yes it may sound weird to search on nothing, but notice what you now have in the address area. This is the web address for Google with pages from Australia selected for you.

Bookmark this page, or set it up as your default page. Now when you go to that page, pages from Australia will be selected for you.

Now this may seem like all you have done is save yourself one click. But in fact you have done much more. You have now biased your search results so searching for businesses from Australia is much easier. Who knows. If we all did this I wonder how much it might boost the Australian economy.

I think this is a technique to treasure. Do it now. Don't want until later, or you may not get around to doing it.

Now this is a fantastic time saver. Instead of getting millions of entries you will often get thousands and sometimes hundreds of entries. From what I read, it appears even Google feels people are often more interested in search results from their own region.

Using this approach if you search for nearly any of the authors on the JustLocal book page by name, they will be first, or on the first page of results.

If you really can't be bothered, and we do tend to be a bit lay back in Australia, then here is the link for you.

http://www.google.com.au/webhp?hl=en&btnG=Google+Search&cr=countryAU

How do we know this small change will make a difference?

Based on results from the JustLocal logs, if we all made this small change to search in Australia first, 2 to 3 times more people would end up finding Australian sites without the clutter of sites from all over the world.

So who's with me.

Shall we join together and help build a stronger Australian economy.

I hope you have enjoyed this article as much as I have writing it. And yes my default will be pages from Australia from now on.

Enjoy - Kelvin