I am kinda of a SEO junkie and read just about everything I can find on it so today when I received a email from WebCeo and one of the comments surprised me as I had never heard it before: "Google uses a bunch of signals like location of the server to determine which users might be interested in the sites content. – This means the location of the server does influence the local page rankings." ??????? Has anyone else experienced or verified this before?.
Not sure. But I always see people making advertising promises about running articles on 100 different blogs, then they also say the blogs are on different IPs. Where does the benefit lie here? Is it location like you're saying? What about us that used shared servers? I guess those servers will serve all locations of audiences... Maybe it would have an effect on speed, and if indexers can find no other way to category a site, maybe server location would play a part. It all gets too complicated for me wee brain sometimes .
I have read that your server should be based in the same country as you - or at least as your target customers and that it can make a difference. I suppose it's logical. If I key - say - Management Consultant into Google, I'm more likely to be interested in finding a management consultant in my own country than in one across the world.
Where may I ask did you read this? That's complete bunk. In terms of time, it makes no real difference where your server is physically located. If anything, US based servers typically are faster and more reachable than their foreign counterparts. In terms of ones ranking with a search engine? It makes no difference where the server is physically or geographically located. I'll give you one main example of why this holds true. The WHOIS information of IP's is not always accurate in terms of the geographic location of the server. To that end, you could conceivably be located in one location and the whois output for your IP range if incorrect, or not owned by the server owner could list another. The only way for Google to determine the geographic location of a given server is by the IP address. Even that is not always 100% accurate.
Here is a similar thread which might be useful: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=953677 Great post, Mia!
Google does include it as a factor, but not as the 'deciding' one From Google Webmaster Central Blog "We still look at country TLDs and at server location, but they're no longer the only way for you to let us know where your site is located/targeted to. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/where-in-world-is-your-site.html
Geo targeting is what they were hinting on when they mentioned the physical location of a server. It is one of the many factors that Google would account for when serving results. Google needs to decide too intents to do this effectively. First it needs to decide the geographical relevance of a website but using several factors, one of them stated above. Second, Google needs to find the geographic intent of the searched query.
Hi, I have a similar situation. My site is hosted in Portugal and my target language is Portuguese. The domain is .com I'm about to move to a VPS in US. I have good SERP's in Portugal, but less good in Brazil. As I understand, Google Geotarget is relevant when you want to target a specific country, but not a specific language, as explained in the video above. Will this changes have any impact in SERP from Portugal (European Portuguese)? Since the server location (US) is near to Brazil, will I benefit from searches that came from this country (Brazilian Portuguese)? Thanks n
Hi guys, I've noticed this before, I have a online gambling site that is hosted on a server in canada. It's a .com site and is in the top 10 on all our keywords, this is only in the serps in canada google.ca. Nothing in google.com I'm now trying to get it in the Australian serps of google.com.au I still busy with links from ausie related sites. So I can only see results in a few months. So IMO Geo targeting is a factor even if you haven't set it in the webmaster tools.
For the final time. The physical/geographic location of your actual server has ABSOLUTELY, NO BEARING WHAT SO EVER ON SERPS - PERIOD!!!! The content does.