I'm thinking of buying some UK hosting to target "pages from the UK" queries. 1. When you type google.com into your url bar, does it redirect to google.co.uk? 2. When you do a Google search with "pages from the UK" ticked, do you only get pages that are hosted in the UK?
Yes it does by default - so the typical surfer will be using .co.uk. (The same for your toolbar search box - although you can override this - but the typical searcher won't do that) I have 2 search bars in Firefox - one for each Yes, UK hosted sites if this filter is ticked, plus any site with a .co.uk/.gov.uk/.edu.uk etc TLD (regardless of where it is hosted)
LOL - same here!!! And you can specify a .com or any other extension to target UK searches using the new google webmaster tools.... so you dont actually need UK hosting or a .co.uk - however the TLD would have some bearing on the human element of seeing a national domain. I personally have never ever had a .co.uk despite being british and having dozens of websites going, but for example, many of my family would automatically go to yahoo or google .CO.UK before .com. I guess its all down to training.
I've seen this, and have thrown the 'Set geographic target' switch on a few of my Australian sites. But does it actually work? I'm prepared to get a UK reseller account to get some google.co.uk traffic - but if the G webmaster geographic thing works, then it will save me a few $.
I have never tried the geographic target tool - out main site is a .com hosted in the UK - so I don't need to bother. The benefit is that I rank highly in my UK target market - but also gain international SERP's. I would worry that setting to say "UK" with the geographic tool *might* lose the international traffic??
well, basically I cant confirm either way, other than what I have read about it, and it would seem to me to be what you are looking for. I HAVE enabled it (the day that google introduced it) for one of my sites, which is a local politics forum. We do rank very highly in this region of the UK for MANY related keywords, and our serps are consistently getting better - BUT I cant give you anything other than anecdotal evidence..... Our serps were pretty good beforehand as well, and Ive got wikipedia links, .ac.uk and .gov.uk links, so who knows what effect the google localisation switch has had..... ....I havent used it on any other sites due to the concerns below: Yep, that would be my concern as well - so I guess its down to experimentation to come up with the right solution for you individually.
I doubt that it would be in there for no reason though, so perhaps it slants your search results in future towards the elected country.