We used to host all our websites with a wide variety of webhosts in the US. Then we decided to consolidate all sites on our own server in Canada (with dedicated IPs for each site). Our one Canadian site is doing great, but the rankings for the other sites aimed at the American market eventually almost disappeared from Google after this move. I realize there are many factors that could be affecting us, but it's left me wondering if the geographic location of the dedicated (or virtual) IP for a website is a key factor with Google indexes. For example, would a Canadian website be treated better in the Google Canada index if it appeared to be based physically in Canada? Or would an American website be treated less favourably in Google USA if it appeared to be located outside of the States? Would we be better off 'relocating' our website back to US-based webhosting for the SEs? Or does it really make no difference at all? I vaguely remember a thread in one of the forums that talked about this topic in general terms, but if anyone has specific experiences, comments or recommendations, your help would be appreciated. Thx
Yes... most definitely it matters. Google takes into account the physical location of the domain. A website in Canada is given more weight for Google Canada index. They take it a step further even and a website in Canada is given more weight on any Google index if the user doing the search is in Canada. It was the main reason I made the geotargetting tool...
They have very good geo targeting software. I know that for sure. My "helpers" are all over the world, literally, and they all tell me adsense ads are for the businesses in their areas when they test for me. I wonder about the site's geo info as well. We're Central Florida based, but the server is not in Florida. I wonder if that matters too?
Hi there From what I have observed based on the mid atlantic east coast region usa and having been on the phone to clients on the west coast usa, canada, uk , and one from new zealand I think,, the organic listings themselves will differ slightly based on two users using the same exact search query due to geo targeting. Taking this a step further I have located the lat's & longitudes for my clients and inserted this information into their index pages head tags: MetaTags for Geo Location <meta name="geo.country" content="US" /> <meta name="icbm" content="42.3383, -71.2082" /> <meta name="dc.language" content="en" /> Change country, icbm info, and language accordingly unless you happen to be sitting in the house next to me.... Just for kicks.....anyone else here know what icbm stands for?? If so I wonder if you'll feel as weird as I did posting them into peoples webpages?? Back on topic.....I think the use of the geo metas may be of import for clients with actual bricks and mortar presence and will for sometime in the future have an advantage of appearing in the top pages on Google Local for area specific searches.. such as New York *.* the resulting query may not be relevant if only a few local sites are using geo targeting but over time returned results will include only the local businesses relevant to the search query such as: west chester new york bakery part of this will also involve the search user learning how to refine their searches, or a part of the personalized search features, as a local google search for west chester bakery could turn up results for west chest new york or west chester pennsylvania and probably a few other states. Observations from the sunny side of far right middle left space.
Well I can't confirm this, I am #1 at google.de for more than a year now and my website is located in the Texas (the DNS server is in TX as well). It's a .de domain though.