.com domain with UK hosting

Discussion in 'Bing' started by Alyseo, Oct 18, 2005.

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  1. #1
    OK, so I've read here and there that MSN.com skews it's results towards sites hosted in the US. I have a feeling, based on my own experience, that this is true but I would like to know has anyone else on the board experienced this as a problem? or alternatively has anyone achieved success with any competitive terms in MSN.com while hosted elsewhere?


    Here's the background:

    I have a site that is ranked well for a range of keywords in all the other engines, has been around for years and has plenty of backlinks. It doesn't rank in MSN.com for any but the most obscure terms but ranks well on highly competitive terms in all other engines. It also strangely enough, ranks well on MSN.co.uk. It is US focussed in terms of it's content, it's target audience, most of it's links etc.

    I should say, that it hasn't ranked in MSN for a long, long time but prior to the release of their own engine ,MSN used to server up total rubbish on the keyphrases I would look at so I didn't worry about it too much.

    Anyway. Has anyone else seen evidence that MSN.com doesn't rank UK hosted sites? or has anyone got strong evidence to the contrary? It's impossible for me to test alone without moving the site.

    P.S. to avoid confusion, the site is in the index for MSN.com alright just not ranking well.

    Would appreciate any opinions on the subject.

    Thanks in advance.

    Alastair
     
    Alyseo, Oct 18, 2005 IP
  2. Design Agent

    Design Agent Peon

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    #2
    Yes, MSN is trying harder than most to seperate UK and US results. .co.uk, Uk hosted or UK reg tend to rank on .co.uk from my experience.
     
    Design Agent, Oct 18, 2005 IP
    alang likes this.
  3. Alyseo

    Alyseo Peon

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    #3
    Thanks Design Agent

    I see the same and most engines seem to take a similar tack. So that, ANotherSearchEngine.co.uk will tend to bias results towards UK hosted or TLD'd sites.

    The interesting question here is whether MSN.com biases it's results towards US hosted sites.

    Some people suggest that UK hosting and a .com domain allows you to target UK searchers while still achieving results in the main .com version of the engines. For Google, Yahoo, Ask.com and any others where I'm interested enough to check, this appears to be true. But MSN.com seems to rank UK hosted sites as less relevant.

    The problem is, I can't draw a conclusion on this based on the experience of one site.

    Has anyone else here had problems getting MSN.com rankings for a .com domain hosted in the UK (or other non US location)?

    Alternatively, does anyone have experience of strong rankings on MSN.com for a site hosted in the UK?

    These would give some evidence to draw a conclusion on whether MSN.com biasses results towards US hosted sites.
     
    Alyseo, Oct 20, 2005 IP