All good points, thanks for your input guys. Rich your 2c is worth gold, especially the Problem+Solution=Success model. I think you're right I just need to keep adding value to the website...

It's yet another interesting "challenge". As Kyle stated, "personalisation" impacts the results a user sees. I've also been experimenting and noticed that "localisation" is making an appearance and not just via regional domains either.

I'm using a piece of software in a beta-test that lets me specify where in the UK I wish to "appear" to be from a list of about 50 locations. It also turns "personalisation" off. Google now seems to be taking IP locations into account. It returns markedly different search results depending on where I "seem" to be browsing from. It's most notable the moment I specify that I'm outside of Greater London or am browsing from cities within Wales or Scotland such as Cardiff and Edinburgh.

I imagine that as search engines progress these and other techniques then it will eventually become impossible to say with any certainty where a site genuinely ranks in the listings. There will simply be too many end user variables.

If you haven't already done so, it might be worth logging out of Google, clearing your cache and browser history, etc. and searching again. I keep a separate "clean" browser just for this. If you spend a lot of time looking at .com's it might well be that Google "thinks" these are the kind of results you are likely to be most interested in and is delivering them.

I've always been in favour of the Problem+Solution=Success model and not worrying a great deal about ranking to get my traffic. In my specific case I'd rather have 1 paying customer than 1,000,000 casual browsers. For me, websites that evolve, focus on solutions rather than sales, offer uniqueness in whatever form and are built for user engagement will always stand the strongest chance of becoming and remaining successful.

Just my 2¢. :)

Well it's not that scary if you think about it, it just follows a normal course. Think that in the near future Android is going to merge with Chrome OS which basically means that we'll have one OS on our pc, netbook, tablet and smartphone which takes us to a more personal approach to searching. The search is now based on learning too, it learns from you, your daily routine and from the apps you use.

But, you can set South Africa in settings/location and you're back at searching locally using SA as default. It works in my country, but than again Romania is not an english - speaking country so search could happen differently.

Google tends to shift results to being much more local based on your location in the world. Being logged into a Google account (where they have personal data about you and your behavior) can also have an impact.

Basically what I am getting at here is that everyone's search results are becoming more customized to their location,their behaviour, what they like and don't like, the pages they visit regularly, and even what they ate for breakfast (scary isn't it).

This could also be a temporary shift here as they refine their local results. I just know that Google.ca has been far more relevant than a Google.com search here locally for many years. .ca's seem to rank well here as well, not as good as a relevant .com, but they definitely tend to have a higher ranking than .org's in particular under local rankings.