does website HOST location affect your rank??

Hi shawn ... (digitalpoint) ...

i took this out of the thread about your tool so it would get enough attention to be sure about the answer since i think it is an important issue i have not seen discusssed thoroughly here ....

****** you said ****
Google then will manipulate the SERPs a bit to tailor it to your country. For example if you were in Germany, German websites and websites physically located in Germany (again, by IP address) will have a greater weight in the SERPs.

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here is my question ....

are you saying that the host location of a website .... alone, will affect the ranking or maybe even it it showes up in the serps???

lets take an example ..... say website A ..... has a site about CALIFORNIA WINE ..... and it is hosted by a company locateed in ATLANTA georgia .....

say website B is also about CALIFORNIA WINE ... and it is hosted by a company located in california .....

and you guessed right ... website c is also about california wine ... and it is hosted by net nation .... in CANADA ....

while we are at it ... lets go one step further and say website d .... is also about california wine and it is hosted by a company located in london .....


what ramifications .... IF ANY>>>> do each of the above site host differences alone ....make for someone located in texas who is searching for the term "wine" or for the term "california wine" ...... (if you think those tweo terms may be handled differently)
and what is the basis for your conclusions??

thanks

I do not belive the choise of host is important if you are a us website. A huge part of the sites hosted in on us ip adresses are not us sites at all. Many choose to host their sites in the us because of the inexpensive webhosts and the low cost of bandwidth.
If you are a uk site targeting a uk marked then you should either have a co.uk domain or you should host your site in the UK. For other languages (except the big ones like german, .de rules) Google is using the the site language to place the site in the right regional search, however they often get this wrong, danish sites often get mixed up with the norwegian ones, and the otherway around.
Let's search for linux:
Global:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=no&...le-s%C3%B8k&lr=
US sites:
http://www.google.com/search?q=linu...-8&start=1&sa=N
UK sites:
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=li...yUK%7CcountryGB
Canada:
http://www.google.ca/search?q=linux...=cr%3DcountryCA

thanks requim .... how do you define a "us website" ?

i was thinking of the implications of this notion for the thousands of sites hosted by companies like net nation ... which are physically located in canada .... not the US.

JoeBob - I don't believe Google is doing state-specific geo-targeting at this point unless you specifically request it (I think they have the regional searches available in the Google labs). But if you are a US based site targeting US traffic, be sure the server you host on is physically in the US.

requiem - It goes beyond that... someone can search with the exact same query (and not limiting to regional country searches) at www.google.com, and you will get different results based on your country.

For the country regional SERP weights, the biggest factor is the IP address that it is being hosted on, and what country that IP is physically located in. The whole reason I made the website locator tool at http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/website-country/ was because someone couldn't figure out why their site (which is in the UK) was not showing anywhere within the UK results in Google. Turns out they were hosting it with www.lycos.co.uk, which isn't physically *in* the UK. A little poking shows that it's in Germany:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/w...www.lycos.co.uk

And sure enough, if you went to google.de and did a regional search for German sites, his was in there.

- Shawn

thanks shawn ... so you think if your host is net nation, which is located in canada, not the us ... that will negatively affect your ranking if you are a US company targeting US traffic ....??

how could someone confirm that??

ps ... what i am saying is you have confirmed country specific before ... but have you ever confirmed any US/canada differences??

pss ... i just did a search from TEXAS .,.. for a pet ... and i got two .co.uk results in the top 4 spots in the serps returned??

how does that fit in with your expectation??

pssss ... those two .co.uk addresses show up as on USA ip addresses with your tool .... hmmmmmmm

Yep... if the site is on an IP address that is registered to Canada, they will get a higher weight to Canadian web surfers, and a lower one to US web searchers.

As far as confirming it, use a proxy server based on another country... I don't know of any based in Canada off the top of my head, but I do know one based on Korea...

http://www.google.com/search?q=korea from a Korean IP address yields:

www.koreaherald.co.kr
www.korea.net
times.hankooki.com
www.kimsoft.com/korea.htm
www.kois.go.kr
kr.yahoo.com
www.kse.or.k
www.kcna.co.jp
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications...ok/geos/ks.html
www.knto.or.kr


The same search (same URL at Google) from a US IP:

www.koreaherald.co.kr
www.korea.net
times.hankooki.com
www.kimsoft.com/korea.htm
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications...ok/geos/ks.html
www.kse.or.kr
www.knto.or.kr
www.kcna.co.jp
www.kois.go.kr
www.nso.go.kr

The main difference obviously is that the CIA shows in the top ten... and guess what? They are on a US IP address.

- Shawn

It doesn't cut them out from the results completely based on country... just gives a higher ranking weight to websites hosted in that country. Also, you can't tell the country they are in by the domain... See if they are actually on IP addresses in the US. If they are in the US, I bet they don't rank as well for web searchers doing the same search from a UK IP address.

- Shawn

i have been looking for a canadian proxy and have not been able to find one yet .... if you run across one let me know .... i guess most of the companies hosting with net nation are US websites .... that wold be a real problem for them if google is doing this ... is this something you have noticed recently ... ??

Thank you digitalpoint.

ok ... here is what i found ... i logged into a box located in canada .... and just used the browser on it .... so that is connecting from a canadian IP ....

doing that you can NOT even go to google.com .... it goes to google.ca .... and for three searches i did ... for things you may expect to be "localized" .... like things for sale .... i found the exact same results there on google.ca (connecing through a canadian ip) as i got connecting to google.com through a texas IP .....

also ... from that canadian box ... since i could not go to google.com .... i wne to 64.233.161.99 to do a seaarch ... and it was also the same .....

if you like i can do a search on it for some other term you think may be more reveailing .... i tried "horses for sale" as an example .... if the location was an issue you would think that would qualify ... maybe i will try pizza delivery .....

ps ... pizza delivery is also the same ....

so ,,,, unless i am missing something ,,,, it seems canada and the us is treated the same ...??

also, i noticed on google.ca ... they have an OPTION to click on "pages from canada" ... and that does change the results there .....

Google redirects to the country specific Google, but if you go to the full URL for example:

http://www.google.com/search?q=my+search

From a non-US IP address it does not redirect... only redirects on the home page.

- Shawn