Canada, USA very different search result

Hi everybody,

Our websites are all located in Canada and we are satisfied with how they perform (for all our major keywords we are showing in the first Google page in the top 2 or 3 of about 310,000 search result).
That's true for Google.ca results, I mean if we search for our keywords from Canada. The problem is, we have a satellite office located in USA I can VPN in and do the same search from the USA office location and Google returns a result totally different. For the same keywords with almost the same search result number we show up in the 6th result page!

Can the physical website location affect so much the search results in a Country different where the Website is hosted?
Since our business focus mainly on the USA market, moving the websites from a Canadian to a USA hosting provider can reverse this situation, or make a significant difference in the search result on the USA side?

PS: Our geographic target in Google Webmaster Tools was always been set to USA.

Thank you

 

Search results are always catered to the country. Google knows your site (IP address) resides in canada. This is why.

 

Google consider many things like your site IP, the pages from where backlinks are coming, etc. I suggest you should get a US based hosting.

 

domain name, language and site content may interrupt search results


regards,

 

Yes Google shows your ip address. like when you search in india so google automatically google.co.in, canada google.ca ext......


if your hosting canada and you want to result google.ca. so you will get good result in canada search result. because your hosting in canada. so google always give advantage regional wise.



Thanks,
Bhavin

 

Use a proxy of different country to find out the current positions there.

 

@Toktik

We target USA, so I did used USA proxies to compare the result, I can also VPN to a server located in USA and do the search directly from there, in USA we fall in the 6th result page.

 

Lot of options and effects.
1. They have lot of DC's, when search you can check that by KEYWORD -o(oooooo) till you get result.
2. If you are on .ca IP, might happen that you'll get another results.

 

blk, how did this turn out? I'm facing exactly the same dilema with one of my clients.

We're ranking really well on Google.ca (#1 for one of target keywords), but terrible in Google.com (#84 for the same term). The site is a .com hosted in Canada, but my client has almost given up on the Canadian market. I just specified the Geographic target as the United States and I'm wondering if I will have to take the added step of changing to U.S. based hosting.

Has anyone tried this?

 

Different data centers shows different results.

 

Your ip address are recorded by Google and it hence optimize the result for your country.
In U.S. it will definitely show the U.S sites first

 

every data centers shows you different result due to diff. serp

 

Thanks for the responses, but no one really answered my question. Has anyone tried moving a site to a server in a different country as a tactic for better rankings in that desired country? Should this work?

FYI: Changing my Geograph Target in Google Webmaster Tools seems to have had a negative impact based on a couple of keywords that I'm tracking. The site has fallen way off the charts in US searches, but still ranks #1 in Google.ca.

 

Same problem here. Ranking great with Google.ca lousy with Google.com. I'm wondering if where we had the domain registered has anything to do with this dilemma. Our site is hosted in California so I don't think where the host is located accounts for much.

 

I've just been cleaning up my inbox and came across this old thread, so I thought I'd report the results of my experiment a few months later.

I went ahead and moved my client to a US-based host in March and I guess it was somewhat successful. Looking at the numbers from September this year compared to the numbers from September of last year, traffic from search engines was down 10.57%. What we were hoping for was increased exposure in the US. We did see a 22.27% increase there, so that part was definitely successful. The problem is that traffic decreased by 48.24% in Canada. Logic tells me that the Canadian market is less competitive and that's why the results were so dramatic.

The verdict: switching your hosting to be based in your target country can have a significant impact. Overall traffic may decrease though, if you're targetting a more competitive market.

 

Matt Cutts has openly said, get a TLD xxxx.ca to rank well in your country as the geo target stuff doesnt work well in webmaster tools. The IP location is still the most important factor.

More links from US sites will help you. Same for Canada get .ca domains to link to you.

We have a site that was doing really well in the UK but now with good US backlinks its ranking well almost everywhere in the world including www.google.com?gl=us

 

If your website is targeting a specific Country, it is recommended that your website is hosted on the servers of the same Country as it affects the search engine rankings of the website. Hence, if your website is targeting the US, I would recommend you to move your website on a server based in the US to get better rankings.

Also, as your website is targeting the US, I would recommend you try and get backlinks from US based websites with higher rankings which will give your website better rankings in search engines

 

Thanks for the info. I'm going to put it to the test. I have a number of .ca domains that I would like to rank a little higher in Canada. I'm going to try getting some links from .ca domains and see if that helps.