Geo-sensitive Hosting?

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Geo-sensitive Hosting?

Much bearing on where URLs are hosted?

masterjack

5:48 am on Feb 9, 2006 (gmt 0)

Can anyone with the knowledge give me advice regards the effect of hosting various URLs from different countries has?

ie - How would a .co.uk perform, which is targetted for the UK public, with a US host as opposed to being hosted in the UK? Further to this, how about a .co.uk hosted in the States aimed at the American public, or the same .co.uk hosted in the UK for the American public? Anything regards .coms from either country?

Hope I been clear and am in the right category?

Thanks very much

joaquin112

6:25 am on Feb 9, 2006 (gmt 0)

Can anyone with the knowledge give me advice regards the effect of hosting various URLs from different countries has?
ie - How would a .co.uk perform, which is targetted for the UK public, with a US host as opposed to being hosted in the UK? Further to this, how about a .co.uk hosted in the States aimed at the American public, or the same .co.uk hosted in the UK for the American public? Anything regards .coms from either country?
Hope I been clear and am in the right category?
Thanks very much

I know for a fact that extensions (such as co.uk) have an impact in the SE rankings. However, about hosting; I have heard from both sides (some arguing that it has an impact and some that it doesn't) - since nobody knows for sure, you will be left with speculation. Henceforth, all I can recommend is that you get hosting in a place where your customers should be located at - just to be on the safe side.

Regards

bill

7:41 am on Feb 9, 2006 (gmt 0)

Well, GoogleGuy himself has confirmed for us here that either local hosting or a ccTLD is sufficient to show that your site is intended for a specific local market. However,I would argue that a .co.uk hosted in the States aimed at the American public, or the same .co.uk hosted in the UK for the American public runs contrary to that. I don't think either of those strategies would be very wise. If you had a .com then local hosting would be more of a factor.

masterjack

1:49 pm on Feb 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

Thanks for the replies. Seems a bit of a grey area. I was thinking that the SERPs may be affected in that you may lose out with a .co.uk popping up on google.com in the States when hosted there for the American market as opposed to a .com, for instance.

jomaxx

4:43 pm on Feb 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

Some of it is based on simple logic. You wouldn't expect a website targeting the UK to be physically located in the US. Transatlantic bandwidth seems to have gotten better over the past few years, but it still seems like doing so would add a little wait time onto every single page view you would ever have.

Receptional

5:00 pm on Feb 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

Seems a bit of a grey area.

I don't think this is a grey area really. Bill's interpretation seems pretty much identical to my experience. Other search engines occassionally try other "models" but Google's works pretty well.

More of a challenge is actually knowing where your host actually IS hosting your site. You might be surprised if you ever go down to that address on your invoice and ask to see the box your site sits on. Of course, you can find out easy enough AFTER you set your site up, but check before.

masterjack

11:32 pm on Feb 10, 2006 (gmt 0)

I don't think the issue is the distance as what's a few thousand miles to the speed of light ish? The US hosting firm we are using seems to be convenient although I would feel safer if the .co.uks were hosted in the UK to cover all angles, if indeed there was an issue with this. Perhaps I've answered my own question :-))

cheers

jomaxx

1:20 am on Feb 11, 2006 (gmt 0)

Not that the speed of light is the main limiting factor anyway, but round trip between London and Washington DC (for example) is almost 7500 miles. That works out to about 40 milliseconds, or 1/25 of a second, at the speed of light. Not a lot but far from insignificant.

lgn1

3:04 am on Feb 11, 2006 (gmt 0)

But their is no routers or switches in the middle of the Atlantic, and that is what is going to slow down traffic.
Its the number of routers or switches (number of hops) that is going to be the big factor, and the physical distance between the points will be a insignificant factor.

masterjack

8:11 am on Feb 11, 2006 (gmt 0)

...and not the fact that the URL is a .co.uk when it should perhaps be a .com when hosted from the States?

jamie

8:32 am on Feb 11, 2006 (gmt 0)

we have one dedicated box in the UK.

our main site is a .com but it appears in google.co.uk 'pages from the UK'.

we also have a .de and an .es hosted on that same box. both of these appear in the 'pages from country' google indexes too.

we used to host these regional tlds in their respective countries, but now have them all running off the same server and it has never affected our rankings.