Hi Everyone, After a year of having my site online ive been improving steadily with google search rankings. One question I have is in regards to why my site shows up in Google search, Google Canada (world-wide search) , but not Google Canada (pages from Canada) search? I tried to make it clear to google that my site is from Canada, i.e the domain name, keywords, isp provider , etc. Anyone know why im not showing up for Google Canada (Pages from Canada) searches? My site is a .com and I originally registered it like that as most people remember .com and not .ca when typing in an address I believe. The company that hosts my site is located in Toronto, Canada but I just found out by doing a search that my website ip address is showing up from New York, USA based servers. Would it be worth switching hosting companies to a Toronto, Canada specific server and registering my site in a .ca as well? Or will that mess up my .com rankings? I'm in the top 10 for some very good keyword phrases but I'd really like to get in the Google Search rankings that are showing pages from Canada specifically. I think i'm missing alot of visits because of this problem I'm having. Thanks in advance everyone.
get a google webmaster account, verify it, then there's a setting where you can indicate that your site is meant for a specific geographic location. Use that and wait till the next serp update (not pr update, but serp update) and you should see some improvement.
I set the geographic target in google webmaster tools to Canada about 3-4 months ago I believe. Guess it hasn't been noticed yet by the serps? Does this seem a bit long of a time for Google to notice?
In my own experience switch your server to Canada, not necessary Toronto and you will be listed in google.ca For google its not important that your server will be in the same city.
Thanks Francis, Ive just asked my hosting company to put my site on a toronto based server anyway, waiting to hear back from them if they can do it.
well I had a site hosted on a server in the Netherlands, but I was being listed strictly under the US (my site was a global site, so I have no reason why it only showed up under US). I'd recommend making sure the server is in Canada, but also in branding your site with Toronto or Canada. You should add those to the keywords you're trying to rank for.