Hi I have a few questions which I would be grateful if someone could clarify for me. With the implementation of Google webmaster tool's "Geographic target" option is geolocation an issue? e.g. I have a .com hosted in the USA but I want to target the UK. So in theory if I enter the UK in the Geographic target option Google will always show my website for the UK regardless? I suppose the location of your hosting will however still be an issue for the other search engines as they will still go by TLD and then IP? Cheers
I ran some tests few months ago on this subject. To make a long story short changing the target users had no any impact in the traffic. In my experience the backlink will make the difference. If you want to rank high in google.co.uk, make sure you have powerful backlinks from *.uk sites. Good to know: country code top-level domain can not be targeted elsewhere. For example if you have a *.hu domain (Hungary) it can not be targeted to Japan.
geolocation is definatly an issue, especially if you are planning to do affiliate marketing or selling adspace on you site, as the advertiser wants to have a targeted audience
yes it`s true, if you want to target specific country you need to host your site there, have the right domain for example co.uk and get lots of links from websites that target the same countires as you.
I've done the same thing and played around with the geo-targeting option in GWT a lot. Results: no difference what so ever (even in a 2-month period). The most important factor is who links to you. Note that the location of your server does NOT play a major role here (I'm not sure if it plays any role but can't be condident on that) - 80% of my sites are hosted in the Netherlands Antilles (an offshore juristiction) and I (successfully) target several countries, including US, UK and Germany.