Google’s main approach to country level search is to use ccTLDs and IPs. As a market matures, there is a shift on hosting back from the low price countries such as the US and UK towards the ccTLD’s country. This has happened in Ireland over the last few years and more Irish sites are hosted on Irish IPs now than in the past. However some problems still occur when Irish hosters use subnets that have been redelegated as IE IP space on large US hosters. The simplistic method used by some search engines relies on the big IP lists (the delegated IP lists) and these subnets do not show up there. This leads to some of these Irish hosters still appearing as US hosted in the SERPs.

Google has some very smart people working for it but I am not worried about them. What worries me about Google is its technical resources. A country level search operation is always has comparatively limited resources so it is forced to be smarter and more innovative than its Tier 1 search engine opponents. But that only gets you so far.

The complete list of .ie domains is not available for download due to IEDR’s concern over spam.

While a good backend is required to deliver quality SERPs, I reckon the real barrier here is getting brand recognition and building any sort of market share - a very tricky task. Probably would require some very deep pockets (or an exceptionally good viral/guerilla marketing campaign).

WRT Google, something tells me they are not going to sit on their hands while the quality of their SERPs deteriorates. I think they are already starting to address some of their current issues.

[OT] Is there a complete lisitng of all .ie domains available for download anywhere?

Well Google still has major problems when it comes to country level search. It is an uphill struggle but the worst thing for any country level SE is gaining critical mass too quickly. And of course there is the problem of maintaining a number of search indices (one live, one updating and one back up). I think that country level search is the one area in which Google can be defeated but it takes a lot of resources and planning to do it properly.

I have to wonder if there is a real need for a country specific SE? At the end of the day it all comes down to the quality of the SERPs and I can’t help feeling that with Google so entrenched it will be an uphill struggle for any country specific SE to gain any critical mass.

Interested to see what Scrudu will be like and how they will determine their SERPs.