On Tue, 27 Sep 2005, Lea de Groot wrote:

 > On Mon, 26 Sep 2005 11:06:25 +1000, magic2147§optushome.com.au wrote:
 > > That was correct until about three weeks ago. Google has changed the 
 > > algo again.
 > 
 > As 'cb' isn't answering offlist mail to back this up, I'll have to deny 
 > this.
 > I've seen no discussion indicating that Google will return results in 
 > 'the from ccTLD space' without an overly clear indication that the 
 > domain is part of that ccTLD.
 > Myself, I will be continuing to work from the basis that if cost 
 > savings are the target, its generally cheaper to have a .au domain and 
 > foreign hosting than a gTLD domain and local hosting, if the target 
 > market is local.

I use google.com.au because it offers the 'pages from Australia' option,
which I've found particularly helpful when shopping for products sold
nationally.  Without that option selected, it's just google.

Seeing we're dealing in anecdotes here: the other day I used the 'pages
from Au' selection hunting for a particular model Atmel microcontroller.

The single result returned was futurlec.com, based in Broadmeadow NSW,
whose nameservers are au.com (Netregistry), both NS + A IPs being in AU.

<shrug :->

cheers, Ian