View Full Version : Does having a US host make any difference?
Hi
My current webhost company is in the USA, set up at the outset when I knew no better. My site is predominantly for the UK market. I am unsure if this affects my rating with google etc. I am not looking forward to whatever is required of me to move host company, if it proves necessary, but would like to do what is best in the long run.
Any advice on this would be gratefully received.
welshnoonoo
15th May 2007, 11:58
Hi Nerissa - this has been debated a few times and there are varying opinions.
My experience though is this: no matter how obvious from the text and the various language options you can enter into your code if your site is hosted on a non uk IP address (as apose to server) you will struggle to be recognised as a UK website in a Google UK Search.
If you site is fairly new - I would move hosts now! Remember though to ask the question "Are your IP addresses geographically identified as UK ones" because some hosts do have UK servers but their IP addys are still non-uk and there have still been problems.
try typing:
site:yourdomainname.co.uk
and click on "UK pages" - when you do - are you listed?
Hi
Yes it does come up in the UK search.
Many thanks for your response and help.
N
Carl-CSNM
15th May 2007, 12:15
Google looks at a site's IP address to determine the physical location of the server, and uses this information to help decide what geographic search engine the site should appear in for example google.co.uk or google.com
Google also takes into account either a website is a geographic specific domain like .co.uk/.ie.
If your website has a target audience for the UK, I'd recommend you use a UK host.
Astaroth
15th May 2007, 14:17
Google uses IP the most but other search engines do also consider the IP country to a lesser degree. Certainly would be better off on a uk server if you are targeting the uk market.... remember that not all "uk" companies have their servers in the UK so double check first.
I, Brian
15th May 2007, 22:03
Hi
My current webhost company is in the USA, set up at the outset when I knew no better. My site is predominantly for the UK market. I am unsure if this affects my rating with google etc. I am not looking forward to whatever is required of me to move host company, if it proves necessary, but would like to do what is best in the long run.
Any advice on this would be gratefully received.
.com/.org.net etc - need to be hosted on UK IP's for ranking on UK search results on Google UK.
.uk domains can be hosted anywhere for most normal intents and purposes, though it has been suggested to me by a reliable source that hosting in the UK even for a UK domain offers a potential competitive advantage.
Also, I believe Google and Yahoo! process links by IP, so if you're site is linking to any others you own, it's IP geolocation could well be a key factor for ranking purposes.
Hope that helps. :)
Hi there - yes, thank you.
sirearl
21st May 2007, 23:32
Hi if your domain is .co.uk and you have plenty of content refering to the uk you will probably be OK on google UK ,but I would move to a UK hosting company anyway.
The major problem seems to come when a .co.uk is hosted in canada .ca
From what i understand a .co.uk hosted overseas is fine 0 the problems start if you are using an extension such as .com .org etc and hosting abroad.
We use a .com but host in London and we are ok
multilingual
22nd May 2007, 12:21
From what i understand a .co.uk hosted overseas is fine 0 the problems start if you are using an extension such as .com .org etc and hosting abroad.
We use a .com but host in London and we are ok
We had three .co.uk sites hosted in the USA for about 4 years, and although the sites would all show up on google.co.uk, they were never ranked very highly on Google and we never got all the pages indexed.
We switched to a UK host about 2 months ago (Carl:) ) and we are now slightly higher up the Google ranking but all the pages on the sites are now fully indexed.
It hasn't made any difference with Yahoo or Live (MSN)
Hope that helps.
JB
I, Brian
22nd May 2007, 20:02
We switched to a UK host about 2 months ago (Carl:) ) and we are now slightly higher up the Google ranking but all the pages on the sites are now fully indexed.
The thing is, this would more probably be to earning trust/authority/pagerank.
I don't believe I know of an example of a site being spidered less according to its location, unless the hosting provision was sketchy resulting in regular downtime.
2c.
rubberdubber
22nd May 2007, 20:26
well, i have a .co.uk website, and am number 1 on my chosen keyword on both google (87000 references) and google uk (57800 references) and i am hosted on a us server.
Im also number 1 on my 2nd best keyword (47800 & 38200 respectively)
multilingual
22nd May 2007, 22:56
The thing is, this would more probably be to earning trust/authority/pagerank.
I don't believe I know of an example of a site being spidered less according to its location, unless the hosting provision was sketchy resulting in regular downtime.
2c.
When I ran a site:mydomain.co.uk on a google.com search it came back with a full indexing of all 127 pages.
when I ran the same site:mydomain.co.uk on a google.co.uk search it only came back with about 42 pages.
Now the .co.uk data centre has all my pages indexed, which it never had when hosted abroad.
JB
I, Brian
23rd May 2007, 12:32
Google has a load of datacenters and tends to start a new index at one and then migrate it across to the others. This can take a few weeks to happen, and during this period results can get a little jumpy, but once completed, the results are synchronised across all of the datacenters.
Google doesn't have a UK-specific infrastructure - all it's crawlers are from the US - so it's not likely that Google will show different results for indexing on a regional basis when everything is processed stateside anyway, and all results are processed from the same index. It's the ranking criteria which are then processed accroding to geotargeting criteria.
However, the fact that you've moved from your old host suggests you may have had issues with it, and as before, when a site has extended or regular downtime it can adversely impact ranking and indexing.
2c.
multilingual
23rd May 2007, 13:16
Google doesn't have a UK-specific infrastructure - all it's crawlers are from the US - so it's not likely that Google will show different results for indexing on a regional basis when everything is processed stateside anyway, and all results are processed from the same index.
Not true.
I could write a book on this particular topic.
It doesn't matter where the spiders come from, or where the information is stored. It is about how that information is indexed and the way it is presented to the local user.
Trust me - each regional Google uses its own unique datacentre.
JB
Hedgehog Toys
23rd May 2007, 15:29
Our hedgehog toys site is US hosted but shows up quite happily on Google.co.uk. Might be because of the google adwords but it always crops up in the first couple of pages.
Thank you all for your input re this. It is not a subject I know much about, (tends to leave me in a mild state of panic!) so your help is very much appreciated!
N
multilingual
24th May 2007, 13:31
Our hedgehog toys site is US hosted but shows up quite happily on Google.co.uk. Might be because of the google adwords but it always crops up in the first couple of pages.
Yes, it will do because it's a .co.uk
If it was a .com you would be in trouble.
We are not talking about big differences, but small gains are important for SEO and if you were in a highly competitive market it would certainly help to be hosted in the UK.
:)
JB