Dear Search gurus,

I have had this question for quite some time now regarding the location of your web hosting and how this effects your search engine rankings.

I thought that if you host your website in the united states with a .com domain name you have a better chance of getting listed in google.com as opposed to getting listed in google.com.au (Australia for eg.) But if you hosted your website in Australia with a .com.au you would have a better chance to get your website listed in Google.com.au.

I am wondering if anyone has done any tests on this and what their empirical evidence has shown them?

Fred Schebesta

P.S. I hope that made sense if not ask me fred at freestylemedia dot com dot au

a .com.au website will always show up better on google.com.au, regardless of the hosting location.

Over the years I have moved all my .au sites to offshore hosting and it has not had any impact on their SERPs

Very interesting. What about .com domains and their placement in google.com.au? Have you found the hosting location to effect listing performance?

Fred

I don't think this affects "regular"
rankings. IMO Google's index is same
for the whole world. Only advantage is
the "pages from Australia" option. If you
hosted in Australia then when a user choose
this option your site  will surely come up.
I think, what happens here is a temporary filter
based on the country.

webgaya.

Ok, I can see where you are coming from but take a look at this.

Our client laser sight centres comes up number 1 in google.com.au and its hosted in Australia.
for laser eye surgery.

But if you look at it for the US.
Its listed at Number 8 for laser eye surgery.

I have a feeling this has either something to do with the web hosting or the domain name?

What do you think?

Fred Schebesta

I think it is more that there is more competition for that search term on a global search that accounts for the SERP differences

No worries mate. There are many many Google data centers in the world. I can get different results on the MAIN Google depending on location (nearest DC).
As far as geo-targeting, you will always get slightly different SERP rankings on country specific engines (.com.nz, .au, .co.uk etc..)

It is not unusual. We check our rankings (for clients) across many DCs including ones that Google is using for algo tweaking (kinda like seeing the future).

Your server location makes little difference. It might for conversion rates, as many people have servers locally (Germany, Japan etc..) but have 75% of their traffic from the US/Canada.
This means that 75% of your surfers have to route the signal to Japan and back making for lag and a poor end user experience.

Geo-targeting would be the term to look for in SEO for that.... you can learn a bunch

Dear Gypo,

Thanks for your response.

How are you testing your clients rankings on different DC's?
And what are the locations of the Google Staging servers?

I will google search up some geo-targetting.

Thank you for your help,

Fred Schebesta

Freestyle_Media wrote:

Dear Gypo,

Thanks for your response.

How are you testing your clients rankings on different DC's?
And what are the locations of the Google Staging servers?

I will google search up some geo-targetting.

Thank you for your help,

Fred Schebesta

Fred, Fred, Fred.. yer getting personal now. Lol

I can't really put what tools and sources I use in public because it's just not a great idea professionally. I have my own competition ya know...
I shall PM s 'couple' goodies. I would, as any good magicians apprentice, keep them to yourself.

Problem with DC watching is that you need to be intimate with a few sites/terms as well as search technologies (algos, filters, updates, and some LSA stuff would help). Looking at say 6-8 DCs and trying to figure out why they are spitting different results and what it means,  is next to impossible without some ‘context’

It is the fun of it though, trying to sort out which is closest to be released next (algo update) and adapting accordingly. At very least you get an idea of what Google is thinking for the future and tweak your sites now before the next update. A great advantage if you get good at it.

Dear Gypo (a.k.a Magician),

I would really appreciate a kick in the right direction here.

What is LSA?

I am really keen to get into this area.

Awaiting your PM.

Fred Schebesta

Freestyle_Media wrote:

Dear Gypo (a.k.a Magician),

I would really appreciate a kick in the right direction here.

What is LSA?

I am really keen to get into this area.

Awaiting your PM.

Fred Schebesta

I do mostly ‘slight of hand’ stuff. My kids love it..what can ya say?

I sent U a PM….

LSA or LSI refers to Latent Semantic Analysis/Indexing see; http://www.thebusinessdevelopers.com/ar … _link.html