search engine advice

[Mwebb]

OK,

if you host your site outside the UK, and it targets the UK, when some one ticks the "sites from the UK only" button, will you not be included in the listings. Or is it done on where the domain is registered.

I have a .co.uk domain ( and the dot com, forwarded to the .co.uk)

Thanks

[BlackBerryUK]

if its .co.uk it does get counted into the UK searches... it doesnt matter where the hosting company is. If that was true, that means, we really need to get a different hosting company for every country we are trying to target ;)

[mattk]

if its .co.uk it does get counted into the UK searches... it doesnt matter where the hosting company is.
I'm not calling you a liar :wink: , but do you have evidence of this? I'd like to see it in action, as a friend of mine had alot of trouble getting his site listed in local results, despite having localised domain names.

Cheers!

[Coding Monkey]

I'm not calling you a liar :wink: , but do you have evidence of this? I'd like to see it in action, as a friend of mine had alot of trouble getting his site listed in local results, despite having localised domain names.

Cheers!

I moved a client with a .co.uk domain to a UK hosted server and Google.co.uk now is their main referrer, whereas Google.com dominated it before. Also, another client could not be found on Google.co.uk for their .com, until I moved it to a UK server.

[Mwebb]

Unfortunately hosting in the UK is not an option. it is the difference between £100 a month in Canada, and £550 a month in the UK, so i guess i will just have to see how it goes.

I will have a look around on google to see if i can find any answers.

Michael

[mattk]

I moved a client with a .co.uk domain to a UK hosted server and Google.co.uk now is their main referrer, whereas Google.com dominated it before. Also, another client could not be found on Google.co.uk for their .com, until I moved it to a UK server.
You're right, but that's not what I was after.

I want to know if having a .co.uk domain will get you listed on Google.co.uk, with pages within the UK selected, regardless of where the site is hosted.

[SEOscotland.co.uk]

Matt,

A friend of mine owns cool-xboxgames.co.uk - hosted in the US and appears in the UK results

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=cool-xbox-games&btnG=Search&meta=cr%3DcountryUK%7CcountryGB

not the best search string to appear for but the SEO could be a lot better if time was spent.

Does that help?

[Mwebb]

Google answers this for us.

4. I would like my site to return for pages from a specific country.

While all sites in our index return for searches restricted to "the web," we draw on a relevant subset of sites for each country restrict. Our crawlers may identify the country for a site by factors such as the physical location at which the site is hosted, the site's IP address, the WHOIS information for a domain, and its top-level domain.

That said, your site's top-level domain does not need to match the country domain for which you would like it to return. It is also important to keep in mind that our crawlers do not index duplicate content, so creating identical sites at several domains will probably not result in their returning for many country restricts. If you do create duplicate domains, we suggest using a robots.txt file to block our crawler from accessing all but your preferred one.

http://www.google.co.uk/webmasters/faq.html

It seems they take it all into account!!!

[mattk]

Thanks Dave and Michael, that's interesting to know.

[webit]

if its .co.uk it does get counted into the UK searches... it doesnt matter where the hosting company is. If that was true, that means, we really need to get a different hosting company for every country we are trying to target ;)

Thats not my understanding - Google Geocodes the IP address to deliver targetted search content AFAIK

Oh - just been answered.. BTW thats why we go for TLDs and this seems to get best coverage in google.com and .co.uk

[BlackBerryUK]

If you are targeting the UK...
Then you need either a .co.uk OR hosting on a server in the UK


this is what I have been advised! I can find more details for you though :)