Changing Servers affecting SE rankings??

Does Changing servers affect search engine rankings. If yes, to what extent??

Also, Currently my Server is situated in India. So, I get most querries from google.co.in.. If I switch to a US server, does it mean I will get the queries from google.com???

Will my rankings placed on the google.com domain get affected if I switch to the US server from the Indian one..

Please discuss further..

 

It depends on your domain name. If you have an Indian '.in' domain name, you'll still appear most often in searches from google.co.in. If you change your domain name to have .com on the end, then you might appear in searches from google.com. I don't believe that where your web server is actually based will matter (my UK web site is hosted in the US, but because I have a .co.uk domain name, I appear on google.co.uk).

Cryo.

PS. I tried to go to your referringsites website, but it gave me an error.

 

The domain name I am looking to transfer here is www.connectmobiles.com..

I wonder why my traffic is originating from google.co.in then..



p.s. Referringsites.com has a full disk space.. I am working towards changing its servers too today itself..

 

Yes it does matter where your server is located as Google determines the location of the server to serve results. Yahoo & MSN probably will start dong the same in the future if they havent already started.

Dont get hung up on the domain extensions its not important as people think. If I run a search here in Ireland I still get results with .com's in the top 5 results. I suspect the reason why I see a .ie or even a .co.uk is because the site is being hosted either in Ireland or UK.

I have yet to see one of my search's bring up a result with a .eu domain

 

Because your server is based in India - Google sees this from your IP and places you in the Indian SERPs. I presume you have many links from other sites in Indai so this will also affect your SERP placement.

Bear in mind that if you move your site to the US you may lose your rankings in Indian SERPs.

 

But.. then my queries at google.com increases comparitively .. am I right??

 

Well the ncihe you are targeting may be far more competitive on .com SERPs.

You *may* have to do a lot of work to get good rankings on google.com.

Unfortunately its not always as simple as just switching server and then getting good results on the new SERPs. Google sees your pages as being relevant for your keywords in India. They may not be relevant enough to rank well for US. Al depends on competion in your niche.

 

Got it... I will need a much more.. competitive.. Keyword analysis

 

A .com site is such a general extension and there are so many sites in all countries using it that the search engines use hosting location as the main factor in deciding where the site is located.

A .co.uk site should always show up in a search for UK results so its safe for the search engines to ignore hosting location for this type of site.

 

Thanks, mad4 - that's a great answer. I understand now.

 

I just noticed.. One of my sites(Indian Ownership) has a server located in USA. And yet the visitors through google.co.in (i.e Indian Visitors) is the highest 33.81 % to be precise.. I have another site with the Same scenario..

I think it is sumthing to do with the WHOIS information of any particular site... that causes Google to determine the suitable domain for it to be displayed....

 

Could be that most of the inbound links for these sites are from sites hosted in India or with .co.in extensions? I doubt it's anything to do with your WHOIS info..I mean I rank better at google.com than at google.ca and yet my whois is always my actual address and info which is in Canada of course.

 

If you use a redirect, after a few days you should be fine.