How would Google Determine country of a website

[visioninfotech]

Hi Everyone.

I am bit confused regarding the country of a website.

Do they see the Whois information for this ?
Or
They use the place where the site is hosted ? (This shouldnt be the case as many websites are hosted on US servers)

Regards
Gurpreet

[Mong]

They have access to both ip address of machine and whois information. :)

[chops]

For google purposes: a uk website is one which is hosted in uk, with a uk ip address(with a .com etc..), or ends in .co.uk
Same for other countries presumably..

[noniman]

One of my .com sites was hosted on a US dedicated server for several years – whois info shows New Zealand. The site ranked #1-3 on google.com for over 3 years for my main key word.
Last year I decided to change to a cheaper dedicated server here in New Zealand. Within weeks my site dropped to position #11-15 on google.com but got up to position #1-2 at google.co.nz
I changed back to a US dedicated server after nearly 9 months ago but my ranking has not changed since than. Doesn’t make any sense to me at all. :confused:

[RedCardinal]

Yep via ccTLD and server IP.

The many sites hosted in the States either own ccTLD of the country they are targeting or simply dont show up in other country level 'pages from country' searches.

[RedCardinal]

One of my .com sites was hosted on a US dedicated server for several years – whois info shows New Zealand. The site ranked #1-3 on google.com for over 3 years for my main key word.
Last year I decided to change to a cheaper dedicated server here in New Zealand. Within weeks my site dropped to position #11-15 on google.com but got up to position #1-2 at google.co.nz
I changed back to a US dedicated server after nearly 9 months ago but my ranking has not changed since than. Doesn’t make any sense to me at all. :confused:

Probably coincidence then - maybe your competitors did a lot of work?

[Old Welsh Guy]

Google also uses the location of inbound links to geo target a site. If you have a .com but have masses of .uk domains pointing in , ESPECIALLY deep linking, then you can be seen as a Uk site. But the two main factors are physical location of IP and domain.

[bwp58]

I'm setup the same a noniman. US server but NZ Whois

A few months ago I tried putting some geo info in my header as follows:

<meta name="ICBM" content="36.17, -115.14" />
<meta name="geo.position" content="36.17;-115.14" />

Points to Las Vegas.

A week after that I noticed a time zone shift in my traffic and more targetted from the US.

Could be just co-incidence. Only seemed to affect Google and not MSN or Yahoo.

Has anyone else any experience of this ?

Regards
Brian

[noniman]

Probably coincidence then - maybe your competitors did a lot of work?

That’s of cause possible but would be quite a coincidence.
I even got a PDF document ranking above me for several months now.


I'm setup the same a noniman. US server but NZ Whois

A few months ago I tried putting some geo info in my header as follows:

<meta name="ICBM" content="36.17, -115.14" />
<meta name="geo.position" content="36.17;-115.14" />

Points to Las Vegas.

A week after that I noticed a time zone shift in my traffic and more targetted from the US.

Could be just co-incidence. Only seemed to affect Google and not MSN or Yahoo.

Has anyone else any experience of this ?

Regards
Brian

That’s an interesting thought. Someone else tried this before?

[visioninfotech]

its intresting to discuss this issue as it can effect many things later

i am very happy to see response from members on the forum.

Forget abt .co.uk, as this is clear from the domain, my main aim is to think regarding the generic domains , .com, .net and org

i guess its mix of whois and IP, but cant say for sure.

[noniman]

I think the question should really be ‘Why isn’t Google trying to determine what geographical location is the site trying to target?” by site language, currency on a ecommerce site, incoming links and so on.
If whois is a criteria how can a webmaster effectively target another country?

[mad4]

One of my .com sites was hosted on a US dedicated server for several years – whois info shows New Zealand. The site ranked #1-3 on google.com for over 3 years for my main key word.
Last year I decided to change to a cheaper dedicated server here in New Zealand. Within weeks my site dropped to position #11-15 on google.com but got up to position #1-2 at google.co.nz
I changed back to a US dedicated server after nearly 9 months ago but my ranking has not changed since than. Doesn’t make any sense to me at all. :confused:

Are you 100% sure the site is US hosted? Whats the url?

[noniman]

Are you 100% sure the site is US hosted? Whats the url?

It's www.noninz.com
The Ip address is 209.18.124.230
The site is at the moment on a shared server.

[aditya_sfs]

not necessarily....as a .co.in domain name is indian but can be hosted on a US server. So the domain name doesnt matter. I think the only way is IP address of the server.

[mad4]

It's www.noninz.com
The Ip address is 209.18.124.230
The site is at the moment on a shared server.

Comes up in the US results for me. It must be another reason.

[visioninfotech]

but if it was only based on IP, they would make most websites in USA as more than 60 % of the servers are in USA and as hosting is cheap, resellers and web hosts have USA based hosting and IP

[Old Welsh Guy]

but if it was only based on IP, they would make most websites in USA as more than 60 % of the servers are in USA and as hosting is cheap, resellers and web hosts have USA based hosting and IP


I don't know why I bother making posts sometimes if people don't read them ;)

Google uses

Physical location of IP
Domain registration suffix and location
inbound link locations.

[mad4]

For those of you who don't believe OWG's sound advice.....http://sitemaps.blogspot.com/2006/07/tips-for-non-us-sites.html

[visioninfotech]

I don't know why I bother making posts sometimes if people don't read them ;)

Google uses

Physical location of IP
Domain registration suffix and location
inbound link locations.

i read it earlier, my response was to one other guy who was talking abt .co.in domain

[noniman]

I don't know why I bother making posts sometimes if people don't read them ;)

Google uses

Physical location of IP
Domain registration suffix and location
inbound link locations.

Sorry for warming this old thread up again but I still don’t get it.
As per my previous post, my site is a .com site, has an US based IP address and 99% of my incoming links are from the US and Europe. I am ranking #1 in google.co.nz when search worldwide for my main keyword but nowhere to be seen when clicking “Pages from New Zealand only”. When I search on google.com I am ranked #21 at the moment. The site itself is targeting visitors worldwide without any specific country in mind – it’s even translated into 4 different languages.
The only thing really pointing to New Zealand is the Whois info which I believe I can change to whatever I want. The domain is parked at a New Zealand registrar – could this have something to do with it?
Thanks

[mad4]

US sites will show up fine on a search of google.co.nz. I don't understand what you are expecting to happen? This is exactly how Google should and does handle sites.

[noniman]

About 8 months ago it was exactly the opposite with my rankings. I was nowhere to be seen in google.co.nz but was #1 at google.com for my main keyword.
This is what I would have expected from Google for a site targeting world wide audience. For some reason I am now ranking #1 on google.co.nz

[visioninfotech]

i guess it has more to do with the IP and the whois records now.

[Old Welsh Guy]

About 8 months ago it was exactly the opposite with my rankings. I was nowhere to be seen in google.co.nz but was #1 at google.com for my main keyword.
This is what I would have expected from Google for a site targeting world wide audience. For some reason I am now ranking #1 on google.co.nz


Could be that you have gained a lot of .co.nz links to the site which is helping to geo locate you as being relevant to a search there. This is how Google works. It is not JUST what they think is relevant, if enough country specific sites link to you then fair to assume that your content is relevant to that country. :)

[noniman]

Could be that you have gained a lot of .co.nz links to the site which is helping to geo locate you as being relevant to a search there. This is how Google works. It is not JUST what they think is relevant, if enough country specific sites link to you then fair to assume that your content is relevant to that country. :)

This would make sense but definitely not the case with my site.
Last thing I can think of is changing the name server which pointed to a New Zealand registrar. I am changing over to US registrar tomorrow and see what difference it makes.
Thanks for all your comments and advice.

[noniman]

i guess it has more to do with the IP and the whois records now.

IP address in my opinion definitely doesn’t make any difference.
Having my own server I can buy a block of IP addresses from anywhere in the world. On another US server I have the assigned IP addresses show up as a South Africa location. Questioning the hosting company I was told the IP addresses where purchased together with a company they bought. The sites on that server ranked best on google.com attracting mainly US visitors.

[amnezia]

extension, location of server and location of inbound links

[sarathy]

When you try to rank in uk and have more links coming from .co.uk sites to your site You may rank well in yahoo uk and google uk., TLD links do matter to rank well in that particular country,
As to how google determines the country of a website.,
a)TLD links,
b)Country where a site is hosted,
c)It can also derive this info from the Users having the google toolbar (I assume so), For example if i start a india related site , It will be visited mostly by indians, Google may know about this through its toolbar.,

[noniman]

I know I sound like a broken record now but my site has the following:
Extension: .com
Server location: US
Incoming links: estimated 90% US
Visitors: 80% US

[crerem]

a similar question:
If i make a site in italian is better to take a .com domain or a .it ?
thanks

[mad4]

I would choose a .it