Does the Fact that Your Site is Hosted in a Different Country Affect Your Search Engine Rankings?
Erica in Washington asked a great question about SEO with regards to the hosting of a site. This was actually a tough one to answer because really there is no concreate answer from the search engines on this topic.
This is one of those questions that we are often asked (as to how hosting in one country while trying to rank in another affects rankings in the search engines) that has proven difficult to answer. For example, let's say your website is hosted in Canada, yet you want to target the United States. Does the fact that your site is hosted in a different country affect your rankings?
The answer is yes. At least right now this is how it works with the engines.
The question about server location and how it may impact SEO rankings of sites is an interesting question. We have actually asked the search engines this exact question and unfortunately they have not really provided us with a distinct, concrete answer as to the exact impact this will have on websites. However, here is what we do know:
- At this time, it is always better to be hosted in the country that you wish to rank for (if you want to rank well in the UK, then ideally your site should be hosted in the UK). That's not to say that you won't do well in rankings, it just means that the search engines tend to equate relevance (to some degree) to sites hosted in that specific country.
- Let's use the UK as an example. If you are looking to rank in the UK, the fact that you have a UK domain works in your favor (even if the site is hosted in the United States or Canada for example). The reason for this is that the search engines place a higher relevancy on the native country domain (ie. .ca sites may rank better in the Canadian version of the search engine than .coms providing that they are more relevant).
- The location of the website host provides the search engine with information about the location of the business and as a result enables it to provide more relevant results based on location of searchers. The idea that a website hosted in London is more likely to be relevant to a person searching for a service in London than a website hosted in New York.
- Google has stated that sites that are hosted in a location other than their primary country can run into problems. To what extent we're not exactly sure.
If we look at Google for example, there are ways to tell Google know the location of your site. The easiest way is setting the geographic target via Google Webmaster Tools. You can use this tool to let Google know the location of your site. If your domain is a location-specific TLD (such as .uk), Google will show you the country that your site is associated with but won't let you specify something different. However, if your domain is not country specific (such as a .com or .net), you can indicate the location of the site. Vanessa Fox posted an article on this a while back on Search Engine Land.
There has been a lot of discussion on this throughout the blogosphere and forums. Here's what a few people have said about the impact of GEO hosting and how they relate to search engine rankings:
http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum10/10917.htm
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/3409622.htm
http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/browse_thread/thread/31f09536fb8462f/c97d7cf02c37d80d?lnk=gst&q=
http://ventureskills.wordpress.com/2007/05/13/geo-targeting-ranking-factors/
http://www.searchguild.com/tpage30031-0.html
http://www.semconsultancy.com/seo/geo-location-domain/
http://www.seo-expert-services.co.uk/blog/posts/better-google.co.uk-search-engine-rankings.html
The fact of the matter is, is that it is best to have your website hosted in the country that you want to rank in. The engines have a relevancy factor they use to accommodate users from countries so that they are served up the most relevant results. Ideally the engines should serve up the most relevant results regardless of where the most relevant site is for that search term.
Original Post as found on SEO-Space
9 Comments to “Does the Fact that Your Site is Hosted in a Different Country Affect Your Search Engine Rankings?”
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If you really *want* to rank in a specific country, interesting advice. (And no, teh SEs have got it wrong if they think that the location where a site is hosted says anything about where a business is located – quite often that is not the case at all.)
But what if you do *not* want to rank in any specific country but are targeting a truly international audience?
I’m currently in the process of moving my sites (all internationally-targeted) to a new host – in the Netherlands, from one in the US. What impact – if any – would that have on my rankings, and why?
Hi Marjolein,
Thanks for stopping by. While we’re not sure of the exact impact that your switching of hosting companies will have, you may notice some ranking fluctuations in say Google.com, or you may not notice any changes at all. If anything , you may see an increase in rankings in the Netherlands. There are numerous factors that come into play… ie. how well your site is optimized, linking structures, site architecture etc.
I would suspect that in the future, the search engines will make an attempt to serve up the most relevant content regardless of where the website is located geographically.
I can say from personal experience that it is absolutely necessary to host the site in the same country that you are targeting. I had a similar situation between the UK and USA and saw the rankings go way up when I moved to the hosting to my targeted country in the USA.
The effect can be quite staggeringly massive. I was hosting in America for the lower prices but moved to UK hosting as I’d read a similar post to this one several years back. Traffic went up THIRTY fold within about 2 or 3 weeks.
Funnily enough, I now find myself in the position of wanting American traffic and looking for an American host for a couple of sites since, of course, the google webmasters tool only works for google ie I’m currently losing the benefit of yahoo, msn, etc.
This is totally the case… my US Hosted site is number one on Google.com for a term but I cant get there at all for the .co.uk site. Its a pain.
I found this blog while I was searching google on key term website hosting. I like articles posted. Thanks
After reading Very good ideas on your Blog. I adore. thanks you for presenting such good content
great post, i was looking for the solution for hosting issue on different region and ur blog gave answer. But now comment made by Marjolein Katsma make me again puzzled with new issue…please let me know if u find solution for how to exclude site from one specific region
Server location does matter. i have seen website hosted in UK do well in the UK market and those hosted in say US servers ranks well in the USA.