International sites on local IP addresses

Should a German language site be hosted in Germany?

[Panic_Man]

We have a number of international sites, currently hosted on either UK or US servers.

The feeling is that there might be a benefit to having, for example, our German site (written in german) hosted on a server in Germany and therefore having a German IP address?

Can anyone confirm this concept either way?

Thanks all.

[jchampliaud]

I once saw someone here write somethink like a site hosted in the UK will do better on Google UK than a site not hosted in the UK. Now if this is realy true I don't know. I would be interested to know. From I've seen with my sites it's not clear. I have one site that is at the top of Google UK but hosted in the US.

[wolfadeus]

As with the previous post: I keep hearing that a US site should be hosted in the US, but can't confirm from own experience.

On a practical note, host in the country that your users are from in order to keep the loading time short.

[steve]

I have one site that is at the top of Google UK but hosted in the US

But is it a .co.uk?

Google and MSN check the TLD and where the server is to determine the the audience the site targets.

A .uk will do well in the UK listings wherever it is hosted.

A .com will be assumed to target the USA. To target another country it must be hosted there.

[Panic_Man]

The german site was originally hosted in Germany, but when it moved to the UK it slipped in positions quite badly. However, I guess there could a number of factors involved.