Hello guys! I am just wondering if hosting server location can have a negative impact on Google website ranking positions? If, for example, my forum is planned to be in the Russian language with .com domain extension and hosted on the US server? I am wondering if a website will be found by Russian requests in google.com.ua and google.com.ru searching engines? What are your opinions about this? Thanks in advance!
Everything will be ok, if your content will be ok. It's about geotargeting, and Google deals with it great. Hosting and domain could not have impact on rankings, only problem could be with your hosting if it is too slow.
Yes, my content will be SEO oriented and written in Russian, I am going to start with shared hosting and as soon I manage to have more users, I will do upgrade to more advanced package!
In my experience server location does impact SERPS also.... Quite so....not that I care, not a biggie so I get around it.
In my experience server location does effect search rankings. Google is geo-targetted so if a site is hosted in the US it expects it to be in english. In fact.. I had a site hosted in the UK, it came top in Google UK, but was no where in Google US. I moved the hosting to the states and my US rankings improved. I also lost the top rank in the UK. Sorry to bore you with that story.. but I felt it was relevant J
The Hosting Server location does not have any impart on Google PR. Yes, sometime it affect your PR if the Server or IP remain blacklisted or Spamlisted on Google database. Since Russian and African rejoin has bad name in spamming or fake offers my suggestion to stay away from Russian datacenter since there is few possibility of listing Spam IP. Defiantly Google PR does not filer based on country location unless server or Ip is blacklisted. I do respect and honor Russian and African community having not intention to hurt them.
I know for a fact that the location of your server will affect your rankings in the serps in google. If you would like to rank well in Russia it would be best to have your site hosted on a Russian server.
There are other factors that are much more important than where your website is hosted. If you get enough quality links, they won't care if your website is hosted in Antarctica. When choosing a web host the more important factors are speed and reliability. If you can get that kind of hosting in your target country, then you might as well, but don't expect it to be a deciding factor. In some circumstances it might help as people have mentioned in their experiences above.
You see, the situation is the following - I live in Ukraine, a website will be written in Russian and nevertheless it is oriented on Ukrainian visitors, so I would like a forum to be found in Ukrainian google.com.ua by Russian request. The point is that the Russian language is more popular in Ukrain despite the countries are different!
In this case you'll have a slight ranking advantage hosting on an Ukrainian server. But as someone stated before, It can be sorted by inbound links from Ukrainian/Russian sites too.
You see, I wouldn't like my website to be hosted in my local country. If for example it becomes popular in the future, someone from hosting support team may create additional problems for me damaging my websites and online business! For Americans it doesn't matter what website is hosted in Ukraine or Russia! In addition, as practice shows American hosting providers are more reliable!
It is very important that content and hosting place can drive relevant traffic, if your website language is english, it is better to find a hosting service in USA. It is also better for your visitors, they do not suffer from slowest connection speeds.
natural Back links from theam ralted local websites mainly .gov, .info, .org and local hosting these are the plus points to a websites
Yes, my visitors are planned to be Ukrainians and I am going to add incoming links from ralted local websites only! I am going to select a good hosting provider and acting in such a way to provide them with a good connection speed!
You see, I think it is not secure to host a popular website with the local hosting provider, for this reason I am going to select an American one!