helensimons - 11:04 pm on Apr 12, 2008 (gmt 0)

I've searched through these forums but haven't been able to find an answer to my question.

I've operated a .com website for four years, the site is hosted in the UK.

However a peculiar geographical ranking issue has caused me much hair pulling since the site was launched.

Essentially, I'm a UK based business but offer recruitment services to companies worldwide for a particular industry sector. However when I search on google.co.uk for a selection of phrases related to my site it always seems to be ranked lower than when searching on google.com.

For some the difference is only a few places but for others it is 60 / 80 places different.

When I search for a particular phrase on google.com the site is listed in position 9, but the same search on google.co.uk sees it listed in position 81. However on some other searches the site may be listed in position 2 on google.com and 3 on google.co.uk. I would equate the search phrases as equally competitive and there doesn't appear to be any pattern.

I've read through some related forum postings and note the importance of UK hosting for a .com domain - the site has been hosted in the UK on a dedicated IP since launch. Hosted with a leading UK hosting firm and have checked the IP is a UK ip and the server is hosted in a London datacenter.

The site also has a good number of links from UK sites which haven't been cultivated, the links have just developed over time.

I cannot find any logical answer to why this might be happening. Can anyone else shed any light?

The only other thing, is I have an adwords account, but when I signed up I signed up of the US$ account rather than going through google.co.uk - could this be the issue? But I believe there is no link between adwords and the organic listings?

Any advice much appreciated.