@Dominique 248712 wrote:
Your location can make a difference in the results…
can that should be, does.
Google now has options which influence the results it presents to users. So depending if a user has these set to the default values (set by Google) or they have changed these, you’ll get different search results, which will also include competitive figures too.
In addition, there is location factor of where the search is being conducted from. Doing a search for say “online casinos” in google.com when based in the USA, will return different results if your based in Australian, or if you use google.com.au
To add further confusion, searching for say “online casinos” on google.com.au, where one owns a .au TLD; which Google recognizes it’s targeting Australian traffic, and is hosted in Australia, can return results from non AU TLD’s which neither target nor are hosted in Australia. Though these serps tend to be a product of the above Google search options.
Sites that seem to circumnavigate these results are those with substantial age (5+ years), and authoritative value.
However, you’ll also find sites which have held high rankings in mainstream niches are being hacked a lot these days and iframes injected with casino site URL’s. These are ranking very high too. Least until Google figures out what’s going on. But these hackers, hack literally 1000’s of sites for this purpose so losing a few here, well you get the idea.
If you can make it through this field of land mines, my suggestion is to aim for less competitive, long tail search terms. These seems less affected and or influenced by the above.