Anyway for a while when I searched for James McDonald in Google I would get https://toggen.com.au/blog on the 1st page of results.

Today I have done a search on "James McDonald" and It's like page 9. I wondered why, and what was happening. Now here is the interesting thing. I'm on Windows XP Service Pack 2 at the moment running Internet Explorer 7 and using IE it returned the page 9 result. This was by typing it into the search window in the top right hand side of I.E.

Now for a comparison I installed Firefox 3.0.1 and did a search and "what the?" It's back on page 1.

So are the results different when doing a search with IE7 and Firefox ?

The answer:
The IE7 search feature queries google.com giving a range of results from the US search theatre. However if you type in www.google.com into either FF or IE browsers location / address bar you get redirected to www.google.com.au and hence from there you get a more regional results.

So 2 things have become clear:

1. "James McDonald" and thus jamesmcdonald.id.au returns high on Australian only searches.
2. Search Engine Optimization would have to take into account which facet of the Google Jewel you are looking at so to speak. A view from one countries (Australia's) Google portal would return differing results from that of another (US).

This is something to think about if you are trying for a regional only or regional / global presence.