Hi, I posted this on another forum and didn't get any responses so i thought i'd try it here as well. Any help would be appreciated I'm hearing conflicting stories about how hosting effects SERPS ratings . If a site is hosted outside the UK will this effect its rankings in google.co.uk . I have two examples which give different results. The first one is www.britishjewelleryworkshops.com . This is hosted in Spain. If i type "British Jewellery Workshops" in google and search "the web" the site comes top. If i search "the UK" it doesn't appear. If i search in the Spainish google it also comes top. This is all what i would expect. However, another site is www.abcinflatables.co.uk . This site is hosted in Canada and if i search for "abc inflatables" it comes top in both. Also on "advertising balloons" it comes third in the UK search. If i search the Canadian google it doesn't seem to appear. This is not what i would expect. Can anybody please give me a definitive answer on this or does noone really know for sure.
Google takes into account domain suffix as well as the physical location the hosting server is located in. To complicate matters even more, the same query will return slightly different results depending on where the end user is located. For example, I'm in California (USA), so any site in the US will get a higher weight when determining search results. If you are in Germany and do the same search (even if they are both on Google.com), German results are going to be higher for that user.
Hosting would be related to IP addresses, locations, etc, not domain names. Google will try to determine if the IP address you get is black-listed. They will also monitor how often the site moves from one hosting company to another, as well as how often DNS registration info changes, in order to figure out if it's a spamming site. In short, it may (not saying it will, though), depending on how Google treats the hosting company. In my personal experience, my ranking fell within a week when I tried to host my site at one of the big hosting companies. As soon as I moved the site back to the old server, I got back my ranking. J.D.
Ranking *are* dependent on domain suffix, especially when you are searching the international Google sites.
Do you know of any lists showing hosts that host white hat sites and those that host black. Some hosts are quite good at removing questionable sites. Shannon
That wasn't the question, though, was it? When you move to another hosting company, your domain and your suffix stay the same.
Sorry, no. I'm not even sure if Google goes by IP block owner or just by individual IP addresses. I'm pretty sure, though, that if you are virtually-hosted on the same server with a spamming website, it's not going to do you any good. One way to figure out who's on the same IP range is to query www.netcraft.com. Type your website in the "what's that site running" edit box and then click on the "Netblock owner" link. You will get a list of websites residing on the same IP block. Keep in mind that some hosting companies own thousands of IP addresses and the top ones may be not even close to you IP address-wise. For example, if you see a questionable website, it does not necessarily mean that your website will be affected - check that website's IP address and if it's very close to yours, you may want to ask your hosting company if it's possible to be placed on a different server. J.D.
This list will only contain sites that Netcraft knows about though. In my case I know that in my netblock there are over one thousand sites running; Netcraft only reports five.
So it does make a difference what the domain suffix is and where the site is hosted but you can still get good results inspite of that. I'd still like to know why my "british jewellery workshops" site doesn't appear top of the google.co.uk even though i appreciate that no one will search for that phrase. Cheers for the replies
Is your site hands down the most relevant site on the internet for a search of "british jewellery workshops" in the UK?
This report is about IP addresses, not domain names. X Rack hosting owns only 11 addresses in this range (69.64.176.192 - 69.64.176.223) and this explains a small number of listings returned by Netcraft. J.D.
Google tracks not only links from a page to a page, but also tracks credibility levels of pages linking to your page. This credibility level assessment uses many techniques. For example, if your domain changes hands very often, it will indicate that the domain is owned by a less-credible company or an individual and the score of this domain's pages will be lowered. Another criteria is if the domain name is served by an IP address that is known to be a source of spamming activities. If your virtual website happens to be served by the same server, it will have the same IP address, which may affect your website's overall ranking. J.D.
You said "in my case" and I assumed that you are talking about www .timflight.com, which is in your signature. The IP address that serves this domain belongs to X Rack hosting, hence my post. I was just trying to explain why you may see fewer listings on Netcraft than you'd expect. J.D.
Maybe not but it appears first when i search "all the web" and i've checked the top 200 entries of "in the UK" and it doesn't figure. Surely it would figure somewhere. I actually thought that was correct because ,as i said previously, its hosted in Spain but the other site seems to disprove that.