Does it matter what country hosts the site?

Old Gill

For example if I was looking to have a site for say restaurants in Manchester, is it best having my site hosted by a uk firm as opposed to the irish hosting that does my irish sites?

The Apprentice

Its not essential but does add "Juice" to the respective area that you are Geo Targeting..

So Yes.. irish websites irish hosting etc

And please please please please someone dont hope skip and jump on this post stating that you have a different opinion .. It does "Add" ..
It is not a gamechanger in any way shape or form but every little bit helps as the man says. A small negilable differerence is a plus in my books

LifeBeginsAt40

Hello,

I run several websites as a business, the domains are a mix of .co.uk, .com's and also a .ie. I've been doing this now for several years so will give you my opinion based on experience and Google advice.

Google does take notice of where a website is physically hosted but the main influence with regards to good SEO practice is the top level domain (TLD), the .co.uk bit etc.

My web hosting company is actually located in Germany (the IP trace proves this), they host my .co.uk domain names and .com's.

My .co.uk website is currently (fingers crossed) within the top 3 searches for my chosen UK related search phrases on Google. So you can see that having a hosting data centre located in your target country is not essential for good results, but it is another factor.

Google's Webmaster tools allows you to set a target country for non-geographical domains, such as a .com or .info.

I also run a website for an Irish company, with the UK as the target market. The domain is a .com, the server is again located in Germany but the target search market is set to the UK via Google Webmaster tools. As you can see, the issue gets a bit complicated.

Google quote:

If your site has a generic top-level domain, such as .com or .org, and targets users in a particular geographic location, you can provide us with information that will help us determine how your site appears in our search results. This will also improve Google's search results for geographic queries.

Here's the link to Google's answer

A factor to consider though, is the time it takes for a server based in say, the USA (such as Go Daddy and many others), to deliver the content of your website to an online visitor surfing from the UK. Cloud computing is another solution depending on your site's popularity.

If you can find a reliable webhost in the UK and your website is going to have a high percentage of UK web traffic then it makes sense that Google will assume your website is indeed targeted at the UK.

It's not essential to purchase a .co.uk but most people would advise that a UK targeted website should be hosted in the UK and on a .co.uk domain.

Just be aware that many UK based web hosting companies rent data centres abroad, so make sure you get confirmation that the actual data centre is in the UK.

Hope this info helps a bit!

mneylon

Network connectivity is very important.

If the host is using a cheap network or is just a reseller of a reseller of a reseller etc., then the physical location won't help with the bad connectivity

Some people use "on page indicators" to help show who a site is targetted towards eg. UK numbers etc

Old Gill

Blacknight wrote: »

Network connectivity is very important.

If the host is using a cheap network or is just a reseller of a reseller of a reseller etc., then the physical location won't help with the bad connectivity

Some people use "on page indicators" to help show who a site is targetted towards eg. UK numbers etc

Thanks very much for all the advice on the thread, much appreciated.

Can I ask what on page indicators?

mneylon

Old Gill wrote: »

Can I ask what on page indicators?

Well it depends on the target market, but local numbers is an obvious one ..

If I was focussing on the US market I'd probably look at Americanising some of the language ie. spelling such as "color" instead of "colour"

michaelm

Having a problem in this area. A website that I look after is doing really well on google.com but way down the list on google.ie As people's browsers redirect to .ie this is a big issue for me and I would really really appreciate any advice.

ket

Normally not any matter in hosting and targeted country have to same. But it will help you if bothe are same.

keyboardcook

Ahem, sorry, it does. Very important.

If you ask google for pages from ireland, it will not only return .ie pages, but .com also.

That is because those .com are hosted within the country.

See the google advice for webmasters site.

mneylon

keyboardcook wrote: »

Ahem, sorry, it does. Very important.

If you ask google for pages from ireland, it will not only return .ie pages, but .com also.

That is because those .com are hosted within the country.

That's not entirely true, as has been discussed to death both here and on multiple other fora.

benbob65

Google "reward" .ie sites for the Irish market, and also look at distance to server.

jmcc

keyboardcook wrote: »

Ahem, sorry, it does. Very important.

If you ask google for pages from ireland, it will not only return .ie pages, but .com also.

Sometimes it does but most times it does not. Google has a feature in Webmaster Tools (WMT) that allows the owners of a gTLD site (com/net/org/biz/info/etc) to target specific countries.

That is because those .com are hosted within the country.

No. They are not all hosted in the country or even on Irish IP space. I find Google's 'pages from' search to be quite amateurishly flakey at best.

Regards...jmcc

IRE60

Here what google says it look at - in this order

Use of a ccTLD
Webmaster Tools' manual geotargeting for gTLDs
Server location
Other signals

Thats should put that to bed

jmcc

IRE60 wrote: »

Here what google says it look at - in this order

Use of a ccTLD
Webmaster Tools' manual geotargeting for gTLDs
Server location
Other signals

Thats should put that to bed

It should but it won't. There's also the problem of other ccTLD sites targeting an Irish audience. Though it is relatively small in Irish terms, .eu ccTLD has approximately 1559 websites in this Irish search engine that I've been building. Then there's the 16K or so .co.uk domains that are Irish hosted and probably Irish owned. That's all before it gets to the Irish owned and targeted .me , .tv and .co repurposed ccTLD domains. Some of these can be retargeted using WMT but the Irish webscape is a lot more complex than people think.

Regards...jmcc

LifeBeginsAt40

The hoops and jumps we all have to go through and over just to register a .ie domain is probably why a lot of Irish based website's are a .com with Google geo-targeting.

A lot less red-tape and paperwork!!

I'd buy a .com over a .IE anyday, simply because with the .IE registration system it's impossible to be spontaneous, IMO

jmcc

LifeBeginsAt40 wrote: »

The hoops and jumps we all have to go through and over just to register a .ie domain is probably why a lot of Irish based website's are a .com with Google geo-targeting.

Actually there's a trend towards .ie websites over .com and it has been growing for the last few years. Many Irish websites using .com are either targeting a global audience or using a historical registration having been around for years. While growth of .com registrations in Ireland is strong, so is the growth of .ie registrations.

A lot less red-tape and paperwork!!

It is a lot less than it used to be.

I'd buy a .com over a .IE anyday, simply because with the .IE registration system it's impossible to be spontaneous, IMO

Most of the spontaneous domain name registrations do not make it as far as fully functioning websites. Then again the percentage that do make it to development varies according to the TLD.

Regards...jmcc

LifeBeginsAt40

Good points you make J,

I run an established Irish website, has been around several years and we are based on a .com as indeed we trade globally, so just being found for Irish searches is slightly limiting business wise.

We do own the .IE and that is 301'd to the .com

There are several re-sellers of our product so we needed to be able to compete on Google (as it were) globally with other TLD's.
The point about going through hoops is that the .IE process still makes it difficult for the small business owner or the enthusiastic amateur to purchase a website for a later project.

Not everyone who wants to own a .IE domain is in business, or wants to register as a business. I just find the whole process a little tedious with regards to an individual setting up a 'hobby' information website on a .IE domain.
All this having to send faxes and proves this that and the other, hardly the spirit of free thought is it.

I like being able to talk to a client on the phone and 5 mins later confirming that the .com etc is now theirs.

cormee

LifeBeginsAt40 wrote: »

The point about going through hoops is that the .IE process still makes it difficult for the small business owner or the enthusiastic amateur to purchase a website for a later project.

Not everyone who wants to own a .IE domain is in business, or wants to register as a business. I just find the whole process a little tedious with regards to an individual setting up a 'hobby' information website on a .IE domain.
All this having to send faxes and proves this that and the other, hardly the spirit of free thought is it.

I like being able to talk to a client on the phone and 5 mins later confirming that the .com etc is now theirs.

It's not difficult at all, I've lost track of the number of .ie's I have.

It's a 15 minute process at most. I'm registered as a sole-trader, I purchase/reserve the domain on the hosting company site and upload a scan of a letter outlining my intent for the domain. That's it. Done!

I like the fact enthusiastic amateurs, and such, can't get them. It means there's a much bigger pool of domain names available, plus it guarantees a certain standard of quality to a .ie. This has meant the .ie is now one of the most trusted domain names in the world.

mneylon

cormee wrote: »

I like the fact enthusiastic amateurs, and such, can't get them. It means there's a much bigger pool of domain names available, plus it guarantees a certain standard of quality to a .ie. This has meant the .ie is now one of the most trusted domain names in the world.

No it doesn't

The "trusted" thing is something that is pushed by the IEDR's PR team and pretty much nobody else. They base this trust thing on the McAfee reports relating to the percentage of domains etc., in a namespace that get hit with malware etc.,
Malware has nothing to do with "quality" of the namespace

It's like Mac owners assuming that Macs were more secure simply because they weren't as big a target

jmcc

Blacknight wrote: »

No it doesn't

The only thing that guarantees quality (to some extent) is development.

The "trusted" thing is something that is pushed by the IEDR's PR team and pretty much nobody else. They base this trust thing on the McAfee reports relating to the percentage of domains etc., in a namespace that get hit with malware etc.,

It is a nice PR hook but I think that there's a lot more to it.

When the numbers of active local ccTLD domains in a country exceeds the numbers of gTLDs like com/net/org/etc, there's a kind of ccTLD ubiquity effect where people see the local ccTLD on TV and print advertising to such an extent that it becomes almost accepted that any business targeting that particular market will use the local ccTLD. People then begin to identify with their local ccTLD in a way that they do not identify with the gTLDs. This may be (and this is just one of my theories) due to the way that people remember things such as phone numbers and physical addresses. People don't have to remember the full address of the location of their favourite pub because they create a kind of short circuit because they are in the country, and perhaps in the city. Therefore they remember the street. With a ccTLD you don't have to remember the extension if you are in that country. This makes the domain itself shorter to remember. It also makes marketing websites using generic term domain names harder because people create a kind of mental landscape of the websites they visit and brands and identity are more important.

Malware has nothing to do with "quality" of the namespace

The main factor in the quality of a namespace is development. Malware and compromised sites will generally hit namespaces with lower development harder (more compromised sites with fewer developed sites equals a higher percentage of that namespace's sites being compromised and therefore in simple PR terms, that's a bad namespace). That's simple mathematics. However the reality is more complex. Most site compromises that I've seen have been on sites running older Joomla or Wordpress plug-ins. (I'm building a new Irish search engine and it has about 897K pages indexed and 645K pages queued so this is based on what I've seen rather than on some click and drool press release aimed at technology journalists.) Many affected sites have not been updated for years. Malware isn't the only problem for such sites. Hijacked sites where links to dodgy sites are dropped in to the HTML (invisible to users due to CSS but obvious to search engines) are probably more common than pure malware sites.

Regards...jmcc

J_Wholesale

There is no definitive answer as to how much weight is given to each regional 'indicator', as evidenced by the varied opinions on this thread. Our own business is a perfect example of the uncertainty that all these factors carry.

We run a .com site targetting the UK market. It's hosted on a UK server, and webmaster tools points it firmly to the UK. We have address, phone number and vat information on our contact page pointing to the UK as well as Ireland, and we rank very well on Google.co.uk. We're very happy with that.

Exactly, I hear - proves my point.

However - and here it gets weird - we also rank number 1 for our primary key phrases on Google.ie, and we have no idea why or how. The only indicator that the site might have an Irish interest is the presence of 'Ireland' on our contact page. Every other factor points to the UK.

So, no - there really is no absolute answer on this.

link8r

The Apprentice wrote: »

Its not essential but does add "Juice" to the respective area that you are Geo Targeting..

So Yes.. irish websites irish hosting etc

And please please please please someone dont hope skip and jump on this post stating that you have a different opinion .. It does "Add" ..
It is not a gamechanger in any way shape or form but every little bit helps as the man says. A small negilable differerence is a plus in my books

As you said, negligible. With so many other factors, I can't envisage a scenario where hosting in France will help you rank better. Google themselves only have a handful of data centres.

The problem with your suggested advice is this: It's an obvious myth in europe. Its protectionism. It's also fudged. There are a lot of Irish hosting companies who's physical servers aren't located in Ireland but they use an Irish IP. There is nothing wrong with this. Google is a globalised company.

Essentially you're perpetuating a myth because of a feeling. And this is bad. Nobody should ever worry about the country of hosting - they should worry about everything else - content, authority, speed, usability.

Interesting that a .IE, .FR, .IT require you to be local yet most other domains can be bought by anyone.

mneylon

link8r wrote: »

Interesting that a .IE, .FR, .IT require you to be local yet most other domains can be bought by anyone.

No they don't

.IE - you can be from anywhere, but you have to show a "link" with Ireland. If you're actively trading in the Irish market that's not going to be an issue

.FR - their rules changed a few months ago, so as long as you're in the EU you're fine

.IT - that opened up to the EU a few years ago as well

Where you'll still find restrictions are in some of the more awkward ones such as .ru, .cn etc.,

mneylon

J_Wholesale wrote: »

However - and here it gets weird - we also rank number 1 for our primary key phrases on Google.ie, and we have no idea why or how. The only indicator that the site might have an Irish interest is the presence of 'Ireland' on our contact page. Every other factor points to the UK.

Is that showing when you're completely logged out of Google?

J_Wholesale wrote: »

So, no - there really is no absolute answer on this.

I'd agree on that - like anything in SEO there are no absolutes!

link8r

J_Wholesale wrote: »

There is no definitive answer as to how much weight is given to each regional 'indicator', as evidenced by the varied opinions on this thread. Our own business is a perfect example of the uncertainty that all these factors carry.

We run a .com site targetting the UK market. It's hosted on a UK server, and webmaster tools points it firmly to the UK. We have address, phone number and vat information on our contact page pointing to the UK as well as Ireland, and we rank very well on Google.co.uk. We're very happy with that.

Exactly, I hear - proves my point.

However - and here it gets weird - we also rank number 1 for our primary key phrases on Google.ie, and we have no idea why or how. The only indicator that the site might have an Irish interest is the presence of 'Ireland' on our contact page. Every other factor points to the UK.

So, no - there really is no absolute answer on this.

There are lots of sites that rank in both the UK and Ireland. Google measures the location of traffic going to a site - so even if people are Googling your brand/domain name, including staff, then that also counts.

link8r

The Apprentice wrote: »

Its not essential but does add "Juice" to the respective area that you are Geo Targeting..

So Yes.. irish websites irish hosting etc

And please please please please someone dont hope skip and jump on this post stating that you have a different opinion .. It does "Add" ..
It is not a gamechanger in any way shape or form but every little bit helps as the man says. A small negilable differerence is a plus in my books

Further on this - Google have stated that for ccTLD - location makes no difference at all!

blue4ever

Just to add to the confusion - this was announced by Google on Sunday as part of their recent changes to their algo.

Country identification for webpages. [launch codename "sudoku"] Location is an important signal we use to surface content more relevant to a particular country. For a while we’ve had systems designed to detect when a website, subdomain, or directory is relevant to a set of countries. This change extends the granularity of those systems to the page level for sites that host user generated content, meaning that some pages on a particular site can be considered relevant to France, while others might be considered relevant to Spain.

So - the change has moved towards pages with relevant information - intimating that this was not the case before and that tld's & ip's etc were getting more of the the kudos.

moriswatson

I don't think so it does country hosts the site matter. but if both are in same country then also good.

LifeBeginsAt40

My UK targeted site is a .co.uk TLD but I know that the servers are located in Germany.

I am hosted with a major player in the hosting world, so there are going to be plenty of .com / .co.uk sites hosted in Germany!
I have pages relevant to France, Ireland and the UK. I have noticed that even though the majority of my web traffic is from the UK, the amount of traffic from Ireland and France searches is increasing too.

I've suffered no penalty for having German based server as my TLD is UK targeted and my page content also contains UK related phrases.
What will be interesting to watch is my French and Irish search traffic from my pages with relevant content.