Google has now wrongly classed .com websites as not being UK based businesses - so a lot .com websites are now not showing in the UK version of Google. I noticed a couple of days ago that sales on my e-com websites had decresed to nearly nothing. I typed in the business name into the UK version of Google and it's nowhere to be seen (was always top before), but it's still top of the results when searching google.com I can't believe that Google has done this. It's a disaster for a lot of UK businesses. Can someone contact Google and let them know of their terrible mistake?
Our business name was always top in the google.com and the UK version. It's still top in the google.com but not listed in the .co.uk. Google seems to think we are not based in the UK.
A .com site hosted in the US will never appear in "pages from the UK results". This isn't a new issue its just the way it is. Why would google show sites on the US .com extension that are hosted in the US when people are searching from the UK?
.com isn't a US extension it's a world-wide extension. 3 of my websites are on .com domains and are hosted in the USA but were showing tops on Google UK until just a few days ago - but they are still top on google.com. 1 of my websites has a .co.uk domain and is also hosted in the USA but that is still OK on Google.co.uk.
.co.uk sites are UK sites so Google will show them in the UK results. I am saying that a .com site hosted in the US will not show up when you select "pages from the UK". It will also rank lower when you are searching google.co.uk for pages from "the web". If you don't believe me then thats up to you. Search for google.com in the UK and you won't find it. Your site is exactly the same.
The .com sites were showing fine on Google UK until a few days ago - perhaps Google took a long time to get around to them?
I'm not sure. The only thing that is certain is that the best way to get your rankings back is to start hosting in the UK.
Just checked Yahoo UK and the .com sites hosted in the US are still correctly in the search results. If I change the websites to run off .co.uk's rather than .com's do you think that google will then realise they are UK based busnesses even if I still host them in the US? Also, is it just me, or has google stopped showing froogle results as often in the last 2 days?
If you change the domain names then you could/will suffer days/weeks/months of lost rankings. Why not just change hosts?
I've never found a reliable and professional UK hosting company. The email (MX records settings) for the whole company is directed to a company server in an office, so it would be a pain to get that sorted. Although saying that, s'pose I could host a .co.uk version of the website on a UK host and leave the .com email system as it is. Any recommendations for top notch professional hosting in the UK?