SEO and name servers

Google use the 'physical location' and unfortunately this is where the confusion comes from. The term 'physical location' refers to wherever the IP resolves, and with many hosting companies reselling US IP's that is where they end up 1&1 until recently had ALL their hosting IP's in Germany even though the servers were in the UK.

Where the server sits is irrelevant, it is the physical location of the IP.

That said, to answer your question, ideally a UK host for a UK site is always the best option. To check and see what google thinks of you, find a search you appear in on google, then hit the 'uk sites only' option. If your rankings drop, or you disappear, then you have issues. Normally though .uk domain can be enough to get you there. I fear though that as .uk domains are not limited to UK only people/businesses, that this might change in the future.
 
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clickthrough_seo

Free Member
Mar 18, 2009
16
6
As local search takes off more and more, plus mobile search, it will affect you on that level. If your customers are UK based, and you are selling a product or service which is very much aimed at your locality, it would be far better to host here.

Google is starting to try to match the IP location of the searcher, particularly on shopping and service searches, with the IP location of the sites that it finds in the rankings. Therefore, if you are selling widgets in Lichfield, then when anyone searches for widgets in Lichfield, you will appear further down the SERPS than anyone whose IP address is located closer to the searcher because your site is hosted in the US.
 
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R

Red Eye Media

The shopmaker.co.uk domain has Rackspace nameservers which are in the US but the IP address for the actual hosting is in London.

Do you think changing the name servers to point directly at the London server will have a positive impact?
 
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Stop worrying :)

IP address: 78.136.30.98
Reverse DNS: 131647-web2.server.redeyemedia3.co.uk.
Reverse DNS authenticity: [Verified]
ASN: 15395
ASN Name: UNSPECIFIED (UK Rackspace)
IP range connectivity: 1
Registrar (per ASN): RIPE
Country (per IP registrar): GB [United Kingdom]
Country Currency: GBP [United Kingdom Pounds]
Country IP Range: 78.136.0.0 to 78.136.63.255
Country fraud profile: Normal
City (per outside source): Unknown
Country (per outside source): UK [United Kingdom]
Private (internal) IP? No
IP address registrar: whois.arin.net
Known Proxy? No
Link for WHOIS:
78.136.30.98
 
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Stop worrying :)
Agreed. It shouldn't matter where your name servers are located from an SEO perspective, only where your website is located, and your website is located in the UK.

A domain with a robust nameserver setup may have multiple nameservers from different suppliers, in different countries, to maximise uptime (minimise the change of nameservers not being available).
 
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W

webpromoterservice

My experience in this area is that it doesn't matter much.I have seen sites with nameservers in the US and still did well in the UK and other countries.
Just my opinion but i guess people have different experiences.
 
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snvinfotech

Free Member
Aug 26, 2009
17
0
The google now a days had started given importance to the location of the server and the hosting area of the site which in term is called GEO Targeting. I had tried my best to explain everything here. Hope that will help :)
"
[FONT=&quot]Today Google supports Geo-targeting, which targets user in a particular location, it also provides us with Geographic target tool, which will help in determining how a website appears in country specific search results.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]One needs to think carefully about Geo-targeting program to satisfy as many factors as possible. Geo-targeting will become very important for future SEO, it will provide more Relevant search results depending on the location as well as language.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]That is, it is important to have servers located in the area where your website belongs to, so that, it appears in the country specific search results. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]There are some points to keep in mind as far as Geo targeting SEO concerns-[/FONT]
Ø[FONT=&quot]If there is an Australian web site and the client is other Australian then it is better to buy a Domain name .com.au by spending few dollars.[/FONT]
Ø[FONT=&quot]As Web Hosting concerns, also here spend some extra dollars so that the website get hosted in the country that you are targeting.[/FONT]
Ø[FONT=&quot]Use the type of wordings which your clients get understand and are familiar with. It is must to check spellings too.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]As we know, that the ranking of a web site will differ in SERPS of different countries. Any one will want his/her site to be ranked first in SERPS of the country where his/her business gets targeted.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot] For a website to be ranked first, we require some Geo Targeting SEO strategies, like as I mentioned in above points that, The Domain Name should be used according to the country, i.e. if you target customer from Australia then domain name should be .au. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Then comes to Hosting, it is important that the web site should get hosted in a country where you are targeting. Otherwise, if your site is getting hosted by Australian company and its Servers are located somewhere in U.K. then your site will not rank well in SERPS of Australia. [/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Your business address should be placed in the footer of the Site so that Google will easily determine the location of the web site.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]Another comes the inbound links, the more your site is getting links from UK web site, the higher your web pages will rank in Google uk, Same with the traffic, if the visitors visiting your Web site are more from UK via Google then it will rank higher on SERPS of UK.[/FONT]
[FONT=&quot]It is very important while doing geo targeting SEO to check whether you are implementing essential factors or not because for good incrementation of SEO, we have to build websites which are rich in contents showing some brand so that more visitors or we can say targeted visitors will visits to site via Google which will help in increasing traffic to your Website that will surely increase your ROI."[/FONT]
 
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Google use the 'physical location' and unfortunately this is where the confusion comes from. The term 'physical location' refers to wherever the IP resolves, and with many hosting companies reselling US IP's that is where they end up 1&1 until recently had ALL their hosting IP's in Germany even though the servers were in the UK.

Where the server sits is irrelevant, it is the physical location of the IP.

That said, to answer your question, ideally a UK host for a UK site is always the best option. To check and see what google thinks of you, find a search you appear in on google, then hit the 'uk sites only' option. If your rankings drop, or you disappear, then you have issues. Normally though .uk domain can be enough to get you there. I fear though that as .uk domains are not limited to UK only people/businesses, that this might change in the future.

I am looking to use TigerCommerce as a new 'out of the box' website builder/hoster. They use the Amazon cloud computing EC2 to host their virtual servers, for which the IP address resolves in Dublin.

In regards to the question of Google SERPs and the physical location being Dublin for my .co.uk domain - can anyone give an informed opinion as wo whether this will impact upon my google SERPs neagatively?

Does anyone else use TigerCommerce or have hosting on the Amazon EC2 cloud?

Thanks for any help!

Duncan
 
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