Hello! I have come across a confusing situation, and would like to get some advice from all of you. I have a website with domain registered as ****.co.uk. But my website is hosted by a company in the US, i.e. it has a US IP address. I have SEOed my site for a particular keyword, for example, "shoe string". Now, in google.com, it is ranked as number 4 for this keyword, two other UK websites B and C ranked below my site. But in google.co.uk, these 2 UK websites all ABOVE my site, so it means my site in google.co.uk, ranked as number 4 as well. Does anyone know if the IP address location also affect the ranking in SERP in google? Many thanks indeed
I've read that Google rewards people for hosting their sites in the same country that their TLD is. If your TLD is .co.uk and you host your site in the UK, you have a slight advantage on google.co.uk over people who host their .co.uk sites in the US.
It does have a slight effect but you can combat it by logging into webmaster tools and setting a geographic location for your site, they have recently added this function. I have not done a huge amount of experiments with it but most people have notice positive effects on local data centres and slightly negative on other data centres so really it's upto you.