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One of our main sites is on a .co.uk domain but is hosted in the US, and we receive good rankings on google.co.uk whether you search under “all the web” or “pages in the UK” switches – the site has been up for 8 years. We have another site on same server in the US and although it is a .com, all the content specifically targets the UK market (this second site has been up about 2 years). If I search on google.co.uk using the “all the web” switch, then site appears fine and ranks ok, but if I am doing a search using the “just in the UK” switch, it indicates there are no pages being spidered or ranked. So why is this?
Does the first site appear in “pages in the UK” simply because of the .co.uk domain even though it is hosted in the US. Or is the second site being ignored under “just in the UK” because it is a .com and hosted in the US – even though all the content targets the UK.
I have a gut feeling that Google is becoming over the last 12 months a lot more regionally specific so that if you have a site targeting the UK or NZ or Australian markets, then to maximise effectiveness of your optimisation work you need to have the relevant .co.uk, .co.nz or .com.au domain names AND be actually hosted in those countries. Any comments?
So would really appreciate some feedback/advice or thoughts about this – and also any advice about how to get .com sites that are hosted in the US, appearing in Google in UK, NZ and Australia under the localised searches even though they are hosted in the US.
Thanks!
Yes. To be listed in a regional Google, the hosting or the TLD has to be regional.
>I have a gut feeling that Google is becoming over the last 12 months a lot more regionally specific so that if you have a site targeting the UK or NZ or Australian markets, then to maximise effectiveness of your optimisation work you need to have the relevant .co.uk, .co.nz or .com.au domain names AND be actually hosted in those countries. Any comments?
As far as I know, this has been the case since the beginning.
>and also any advice about how to get .com sites that are hosted in the US, appearing in Google in UK, NZ and Australia under the localised searches even though they are hosted in the US.
Not sure if this is possible. Some people belive getting lots of links from regional sites help. I've never seen an example of this. You'll should at least get some regional traffic.
Yes.
"you need to have the relevant .co.uk, .co.nz or .com.au domain names AND be actually hosted in those countries."
No, I don't think so. Either hosting or domain name has to be relevant to the country, then you get the rankings on a local search. Your older site ranks well, so does this not proove this? I remember a thread ages ago where we were discussing this and I mentioned that sometimes, for specialist software reasons, you may need to use a US server. Googleguy replied that this would not be a problem, as long as the domain was country specific.
