English and German markets - hosting in US or Germany?

[oLeon]

We all know the option for searching on the country specific Google sites. All over the world you can choose different languages and "sites from XXX" e.g. Germany or Italy. And we all know, that the last option is related to the IP the website is hosted.

What would you suggest: if you have a business for the US and the German market, IMO it makes sense to host both sites in Germany, because searches on Google.com will get the English website unaffected where it is hosted.

I think, the German website has to be hosted in Germany due to the IP option.

Or should both sites hosted in the country where the market is? I remember some strange results on Google.de and .com of the same keywords, that let me assume that hosting in target country could be the best way to do so.

[heini]

At this time it's local hosting and/or ccTLD. So german hosting is not required for a .de.
That may however change. To be on the safe side I recommend local hosting at this point.
Local hosting, local or generic domain, to cover all bases and place your sites in safe environment.

[ciml]

I agree 100% with heini's position, a .de domain is fine now but if German language searches go the same way a English, then for some types of searches you might do less well with a US IP even if you have the local domain.

> searches on Google.com will get the English website unaffected

Yes, but if Google decide otherwise things will get even more interesting. I don't really think that'll happen soon, but it's not impossible.

[oLeon]

>>I don't really think that'll happen soon, but it's not impossible

If I only did things that never could happen, I wouldn´t do anything at all :)

[oLeon]

So german hosting is not required for a .de

Indeed?
Some figures from the last 4 weeks.

countryDE..........6502....13,0% 
lang_de...........10353....20,6% 
the web (&meta=)..12078....24,1% 
toolbar............1236.....2,5% 
rest..............20032....39,9% 
all visits........50201 

As conclusion should I renounce 13 % of clicks? I won´t.

[heini]

oLeon, my point is a site is included in the Seiten aus Deutschland (pages from Germany) sets, if one of the two requirements are met:
1 .de domain
2. generic TLD plus local hosting
So, you need one or both of those.

However, to stay on the safe side, and be prepared for the future, as well as for whatever other possible new popular search engines might come up with, I just strongly favour to have local hosting plus local domain.