Moving servers

[leeds1]

'morning all,

I need to move my host for various reasons. At the moment the servers are in the UK.

A host I have found and used for another site have their servers in the US.

Would this mean I would not be listed so high in G.co.uk ?

How does G determine if you are a UK, Germany or US company for SERPS?

thanks
leeds

[digitalpoint]

You will rank higher for United Kingdom users if the server is in the UK. You will tank higher for US users if the server is in the US as well for sake of argument.

As far as how Google does it, it's not terribly difficult to geotarget based on IP address, as you can see here:

http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/website-country/

- Shawn

[leeds1]

Oh dear - so I will probably lose my UK rankings then? Even thou I have a .co.uk address ?

Thanks for the tool - my other site does show US based server - should I find servers based in the UK then - I think ?

[digitalpoint]

If you have a .co.uk address, you probably will be fine (but I'm not guaranteeing anything since I have nothing to do with Google).

- Shawn

[john_loch]

Shawn are you saying that the **server** is geotargetted SERPS wise ?
I always thought that the client was geotargetted, with the only associations (SERP wise) being the tld etc.

I mean really, what you're saying is that where content is intended for a regional audience, the host needs to be physically located (or the IP issued) by/to a regional entity for best SERPS results.

Now I know I'm behind the times.. this just doesn't make sense to me. And in all honesty worries me. I'm located in Australia. I use .au domains for exactly this purpose. I'm hosted however in the states. If what you're saying is true (which BTW isn't consistent with what I've seen) then I should be hosting locally.. painful in terms of cost where managed boxes are concerned.

Could you point me toward some more info on this where there is distinction between server IP and tld pls ?

I don't want to sound argumentative, but I'm a little concerned that I've missed something, and you're handy right now :D

[digitalpoint]

You are most likely okay if you are using a country specific TLD. As far as I know, it only applies to .com, .net, etc. If you have a .com hosted on a US server it will not show in a regional search for any country except the US.

- Shawn

[john_loch]

Hell yes.
Global tlds would make sense. :)

Thx.