I'm wondering whether there are any significant differences if I were to host my web site using a local web host or an overseas one. I find that the US has more competitive rates and more reliable support. Would there be significant differences of speed for example. If I was targeting my local market, should I host my web site locally despite the more expensive rates? ~ Bina
If you want good search engine rankings in a certain country then you need to host the website there. Hosting overseas is a major problem for SEO.
Wow! That's very interesting! Can you explain that a little more for me? What do you base that on? In what ways does it affect how the SE rate your page? And does it really mean that if I moved from a foreign web host to a host in hte U.S., I could expect to get better rankings in hte U.S., without doing anything else?
Search engines target results based on the geographic location of the person searching. If you are in the UK they return results for sites based in the UK. Hosting location is much more important than any other factor for geotargetting seo. Yes.
Thanks Mad4! That's very significant information! I really wish I had known this a couple months ago when we were deciding on a web host! Now we'll have to decide whether to change our decision!
Ummmmmm.... I have a website called marbellaguide.com. (its a guide to marbella, spain) Its hosted at datapipe.com in new york. Its number one for the term "marbella guide" and "guide to marbella" on google. Can anyone expain that one for me?
You clearly have a strong site in other respects. Its not impossible to rank highly for sites hosted overseas, it just makes it a bit harder.
Very interesting Craig! Are your number 1 results for Google in Spain? Or for Google in the USA? Is there any difference when you check results for your keywords using the different Google search engines specifically oriented for different countries? What i mean is that it seems like you're doing exactly the right thing if you want to optimize for the best possible search results in the USA. But if you're aiming for the best search results for people searching in Spain, then it's really great that you've got 1st place even though you're hosted out of the country.
It really is an interesting topic. its pretty strange too. google.com and .co.uk bring up the same results for "marbella guide" and "guide to marbella", both throw out number one positions. on google.es though..... "marbella guide" - position 1 and 2 "guide to marbella" - position 1 then in google.es if I type the equivalent terms in spanish... "marbella guia" - nowhere to be found "guia de marbella" - nowhere to be found (this does not surprise me really becasue none of my pages have these terms on them....yet) (BTW I tested the above browsing the google sites in my com from my office in spain and then logged in with terminal services to one of my servers at datapipe and browsed google from the usa and all results were the same) I would have expected slighhtly different results by browsing google from two different countries but they were the same results surprisingly. I have no idea where I am going with this but in my case hosting my english speaking site about spain in new york has not hurt much as I get pretty good results. Maybe some time very very soon, I will try a spanish speaking site based in new york and see what happens. Maybe the results will be different if the site is in spanish and hosted somewhere else. Hey, the little leprechaun at the googleplex makes his fun by changing the results of these searches every now and then just to give us all something to do I guess.
Interesting. So, to double check, if I have a .com.au domain, I would rank higher in Google Australia if I was hosted with an Australian host compared to if I was hosted on a US web host. Is that right?
All things being equal, yes. But as we have seen above you can still rank highly with an overseas host.
If I was to have my You2UK web site with US web host would that have a negative impact on "UK" as a key word in search results worldwide or does it mean that I would have a better ranking with US web-surfers for search terms such as "uk travel".
Hi Svetomir, I don't have the data to back this up personally, but what Mad4 says is that having your web site hosted in a certain country gives you a boost for search results with people from that country who are searching. I think in your case, for your website You2UK you have to decide where you are most interested in getting good search results. If you want to promote your website to the U.S., then host it in the U.S. Your website will still show up in the search results for anybody searching from anywhere in the world, but it will get a boost when somebody in the U.S. searches for your keywords, because it will be hosted locally for that person. I hope that's more clear! And I hope it's true, as well! If you change your webhost, could you let us know what results you get? Thanks! --Larry