How does google class a site as Australian, or Indian, or Chinese etc? Does it depend on the domain name, or where the server is physically located?
It depends on both! If your site is physically located in Australia (by IP) OR has ".au" TLD than it will show up on the Austalian search results...
The ads are not targeted by the location of your site, but by the location the visitor is coming from, you site can be In Australia but if the visitor is from France he will see a french targeted ad.
Guys, are you talking from the personal experience? I have a website that have ".net" TLD and located in US, and though it has Canadian content (words like Canada and Toronto) and many IBL's from Canadian sites, but it still doesn't show up on Google Canadian results...
The IP location, the TLD and the location of the sites that link to it all factor, Visitor location and on-page text don't make a difference
all my sites are .com or .info . but the brazillian site (infoescola.com) has lots and lots of BR advertisers. rarely appears some US ads
My .com site is hosted in the states and USA and UK visitors are my preferred buyers on the site. I also now know that google and perhaps other engines track the webmasters location. I spent some time in Australia and my Ozie visitors rose and USA visitors tanked. I then moved to Asia and the local Asian visitors went sky high especially from the exact city I was living in. So google tracks my IP address and when I log into sitemaps and google personalised search they know all about my location and this effects my site in the serps for these different locations. I wish this wasnt so and I would appreciate help in combating this - perhaps login in to any google services through an IP address in the States - any service like this? I would be interested in Matt Cutts comments on this!!
First, it seems that most people, including me, misread your question. When you talk about geo-targeting it's generally assumed that you are talking about ads. So you are talking about geo-targeting regarding PR and not about ad targeting... Second ... This can definitely be classified as one of the strangest things I have ever heard!!! The location of the webmaster who updates a site most certainly have no effect whatsoever on a sites geo-targeting. Do you honestly believe that google keeps track of each and every random guy who logs into a site’s management console and follows his every login from around the world?
Have to agree wholeheartedly. It would be absurd for any SE to 'locate' a site based on the geolocation of someone logging into Google/SE webmaster tools / control panel. There must have been some other factor involved that you might be overlooking. Did you have a blog/forum on the website?
Hi guys. I have a website and host it with yahoo in the USA and currently cater to the US market. However I am planning to move back to my country Hungary and translate the English language based website to three other languages and sell my products to countries in the European Union. Do you guys think I should change webhost? And what Seo practices should I change if I wish to come up in European search engine results?
I think google looks at the language of the site, at the sites that link in, and some particular phrases. I would really like to know how it works, since I am planning on launching a site targetting venezuelans but I will host it on Hostgator and will use a .COM, will I show up on the search results of venezuela google search results?
Host the site on an IP in the market that you want to target and get links from sites with that TLD and also based on their geographic IP.