Even on Google.je Google struggles to differentiate between New Jersey, US and Jersey, CI. As you can see in the screenshot below Google thinks that Papa John’s or Domino’s are available in Jersey, Channel Islands. Island’s local restaurants such as Pizza Quarter or La cantina don’t even appear on page 1. There are things these businesses could do to improve their visibility on Google to ensure search engine users could find them. But, let’s just concentrate on user experience for a while and see what searchers could do to find local results on Google.

Similar situation when searching ‘pizza delivery’ on Google.co.uk, Google returns lots of irrelevant results.

Let’s see what happens if we add Jersey and search google.je. The number one result is correct, but position number two is occupied by a New Jersey restaurant.

This issue isn’t only related to local restaurants, similar problems occur when searching for hotels, jobs, real estate agents, plumbers etc.

Although you can’t change or improve Google’s algorithm to make the search results more relevant you can refine your search queries to filter out irrelevant results. Here’re 6 simple tricks I’ve been using since I arrived in Jersey and they will definitely make your search results more accurate.

1) Add -NJ to your search query, Americans often add New Jersey acronym to the address, -NJ will get rid of everything with NJ.

2) Add -city, quite a lot of results return businesses based in Jersey City.

3) Add -new this is another negative search term, will effectively remove everything including -new i.e. New Jersey etc. Of course keep in mind that if you are looking for a new car you shouldn’t use -new as a negative keyword.

4) Include Jersey – adding the location name is always a good idea when searching for a local business.

5) Include St Helier or another parish if you know where the business is based.

6) And finally for local results avoid using Google.com always start from Google.je or Google.co.uk they are more likely to return local results.

Any other tips? If you have any other clever ways of refining search results on Google please let me know and we’ll add it to the list.

As there are almost 43,000 Facebook users in Jersey I thought it’s time to do something about it.

Jersey, Channel Islands, St Helier do not exist (…on Facebook)

Jersey not listed.

Channel Islands? No luck.

Tried St Helier too!

Why Jersey needs a network?
There are two key benefits of creating a network for Jersey:

1) You will be able to see and browse profiles of users within a network – meaning easier to connect with your friends in Jersey.

2) You can see groups and events that are specific to Jersey. You will be able to find out quickly about latest events, offers and news stories.

In short, once Jersey is added as a network you will be able to benefit from some of the core features on Facebook.

How you can help – 2 simple steps
Facebook does not allow users to add new regional networks. But, there is a form that you can use to submit suggestions to FB.

Step 1 – Go to the Facebook suggestion form

Step 2 – Fill in the form. Here’s the message I sent to facebook:

Suggestion: Add a regional network for Jersey, Channel Islands
More details: I live in Jersey and I would like to bring to your notice that Jersey is not listed as a regional network. There are 43,000 facebook users in Jersey and they are unable to benefit from additional features offered to users affiliated with a network. Please add a regional network for Jersey, Channel Islands. If you require further information about Jersey please do not hesitate to contact me. You can find more information on Jersey on the websites listed below: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey or http://www.jersey.com/.

Step 3 – UPDATED: 17th Oct 2010
There is another form to submit locations that are not listed on Facebook. Please click here and submit Jersey and Channel Islands.

Hopefully if Facebook receive few of these they will realise that there is another Jersey outside of USA!

“JERSEY has beaten places such as Sydney, Ibiza and London in a list of online holiday destination searches by UK residents.

Internet data collected by Experian Hitwise lists Jersey at 23 in the top 50 most searched-for flight destinations in the world. The database registered each time someone in the UK searched for flights to Jersey between April and July this year.”

The article doesn’t say what keyword variations have been taken into account, what’s the orgin of the data or if the negative terms such as “new jersey” were excluded.

Anyway, I’ve taken a search phrase “flights to” and DESTINATION and Google Trends results are completely different. “Flights to London” is far more popular than “flights to jersey” or “flights to ibiza”. In fact, according to Google there are probably 10x more users searching for “flights to London” than “flights to jersey”. Any ideas where Experian Hitwise UK is taking the data?. For the time being, I hope no strategic decisions are made based on this information.