Fake a web server's location for SEO purposes.

Philbert

Hi folks,

We have an Irish .ie ecommerce website hosted on a dedicated server in a UK data centre. Moving the website to Ireland is not really an option at present because the website needs to be managed by the UK arm of the company.

Is there any way to fake the servers location and make it look like it is actually hosted in Ireland? Through some kind of virtual IP masking service or the like?!

Im thinking because of the nature of DNS, and the fact that Google are pretty smart, it probably isn’t possible..

Thanks for your comments.

AARRRGH

.ie websites are listed as Irish websites by Google. You don't need to host your websites in Ireland.

Liam Byrne

+1 to what AARRRGH said.

There are 2 primary identifiers:

1) The actual IP address within the country
2) The TLD (domain extension) which in your case is ".ie"

If you want to prove it to yourself, do a tracert to both www.google.ie and www.google.co.uk - both are 216.239.59.xx

ntlbell

doesn't it reduce the over all "score" reducing one's ranking for a site if the site is not hosted in the country tho?

AARRRGH

All my websites are in the US, and plenty list in 1st and 2nd place on google when searching for generic terms, so I don't think it makes a difference.

WizZard

You can choose the target location using Google's Webmaster Tools

Some more information in this link.

steve-hosting36

As long as you are using a .ie domain, it won't adversely effect your se rankings. Altho theres also no reason your UK people couldn't manage a server in Ireland

Philbert

Thanks for all your replies guys; I think that’s fairly conclusive. I too always thought that server location affected SEO ranking by virtue of its effect on geo targeting but I understand now that this only applies to gTLD's.

Interestingly it was a well known and respected SEO/Online Marketing company that flagged this as an issue in the first place.

Cheers.

tomED

Philbert wrote: »

Interestingly it was a well known and respected SEO/Online Marketing company that flagged this as an issue in the first place.

:rolleyes: How many times have we seen respected online marketing companies make issues out of nothing.

I just saw a report about a website from a "leading online marketing" company and they were clutching at straws to get the gig. They completed a 50 page document on utter nonsense.

On the original point - although you now know that because of the .ie it's not an issue - you can make your site look like it's hosted on an irish ip block, hence making your site look like it's hosted in Ireland. Just letting you know for future reference!

Tom

ntlbell

AARRRGH wrote: »

All my websites are in the US, and plenty list in 1st and 2nd place on google when searching for generic terms, so I don't think it makes a difference.

did it ever? I always thought IP location was part of google's scoring system

tomED

ntlbell wrote: »

did it ever? I always thought IP location was part of google's scoring system

It counts when the domain isn't a country specific domain.

Other SEOs will have a different opinion - but most have very little to back this theory up.

Since Google started geo-locating, I've never seen it add an value at all.

Tom

goz83

AARRRGH wrote: »

All my websites are in the US, and plenty list in 1st and 2nd place on google when searching for generic terms, so I don't think it makes a difference.

+1 here. I have 3 sites hosted in the states and the main two rank very high here. usually at the very top. its quality content which matters