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All our sites are hosted with 1and1 which has its servers in Germany, typing in 'panic attacks' on google.de puts our main site in position 1 which seems to imply that google sees us as a german website.
Does anyone have any ideas about how to get our Uk page to rank in the UK?
If you mean the "pages from the UK" section, a .co.uk page should be in there wherever it's hosted.
Do both your US and UK pages come up in a Google.com search?
If you want to rank well in .co.uk your best option ( I haven't written sole option) is to ensure your server is UK based.
.coms hosted in the UK will still rank highly in the .co.uk results and also in the .coms if good enough.
Hosting a .co.uk in Germany will usually result in poor UK results, if any, but will be shown in .de results for English language queries for German results, not German only pages...surprise, surprise.
Realistically, 1&1 should not be selling these packages to anyone who want to rank well in the .co.uk results...and yeah, yeah, yeah, there are always the exceptions, but in general they do not resolve.
As you have said your other site can rank at the top even though hosted in Germany.
Quite simple really, it's a pity these companies do not advise the pitfalls behind their low pricing schemes.
Our most successful sites in Google UK are .com, however that has nothing to do with the extension used.
Make sure that your hosting server is within the UK or you will not rank in the UK results.
It really is as simple as that!
Make sure that your hosting server is within the UK or you will not rank in the UK results.
I repectfully disagree and my experience totally contradicts this. On my main website, which is a .co.uk hosted with 1&1, I rank number one for a highly competitive keyword in Google in both US and UK. My other KWs and phrases on pre-sandbox sites do OK too.
If there is a reason why a hosting server has to be in the UK can someone please back this up with an explanation?
If there is a reason why a hosting server has to be in the UK can someone please back this up with an explanation?
Yes, how else do you determine geographic location? Obviously language wouldn't work well.
I'd try a tracert on your website as I have yet to see a non-UK hosted domain appear in UK results.
(I am only speaking from my 5 years of experience, I have not tested this across 100's of sites - there may be exceptions.)
Make sure that your hosting server is within the UK or you will not rank in the UK results.
I'm talking about a site that hits top spots for big money terms, and has done for over a year now. So I really disagree, you do not have to be hosted in the UK.
Ideally, what I am looking for is a .com domain name that is not hosted in the UK but appears in Google UK only SERPs.
You are the exceptions to the rule and there may be several others however I very much doubt that anyone launching a brand new web site not using a UK based server would rank very highly, if at all, in .co.uk.
There have been several threads about this here and it nearly always concerns 1&1 which is understandable since they are #1 in Europe I believe.
As a matter of interest how old are your sites?
When did you first submit them and did you submit them through google.co.uk or .com?
It's very awkward making generalisations however petehall has been doing this for 5+ years and I have been doing this for 10+ years and I would guess that both of us, BTW I don't know him, have experimented with all kinds of configurations and locations and experience has taught us both that the safest and, more or less guaranteed method, is the UK based server.
If you're succeeding, great:-)
You are the exceptions to the rule and there may be several others however I very much doubt that anyone launching a brand new web site not using a UK based server would rank very highly, if at all, in .co.uk.
There have been several threads about this here and it nearly always concerns 1&1 which is understandable since they are #1 in Europe I believe.
As a matter of interest how old are your sites?
When did you first submit them and did you submit them through google.co.uk or .com?
It's very awkward making generalisations however petehall has been doing this for 5+ years and I have been doing this for 10+ years
and I would guess that both of us, BTW I don't know him, have experimented with all kinds of configurations and locations and experience has taught us both that the safest and, more or less guaranteed method, is the UK based server.
If you're succeeding, great:-)
And don't think I'm trying to misdirect others into failing... I'm just saying it like it is. Just trying to add my bit of experience to the intelligence base here.
>Which rule?
Simply a generalisation learnt through experience, that's all.
>I host with ev1servers
Just had a look at their deals...even aol abuse are there!
>Then I just made sure that my main one was so damn good that people would naturally link in; and they have :)
Excellent.
>I didn't submit them anywhere - you really don't have to you know.
That may be so these days however it's only been the past couple of years or so that it has not been so necessary.
>but amount of years doesn't necessarily equate to wisdom/intelligence.
Agreed, but there may just have been the possibility of a steep learning curve that has been experienced. Don't forget that everyone who comes here is in a teaching and learning environment from people who have had many different experiences both good and bad. I lurked on these forums for years before I decided that others may be able to benefit from my knowledge for free which, I might add, some people actually pay to some SEO's thousands of Dollars.
In general most people wouldn't take advice from someone who could not back up their claims. You can and so can petehall and me...with different opinions!
>there are so many great hosting deals in the US compared to the UK.
In fact there are some great deals in the UK IF one knows where to host however I would have to agree that the US deals seem to have more high profile "offers".
1000 Gigs a month is pretty good going and it's not a bad deal they offer for that either.
I would have thought that it would be more logical to determine location from the TLD as opposed to the location of the servers. It's a pity that GoogleGuy is no longer around. This is one of these questions that he would probably have been able to answer?
Personally not for the UK, however nearly all the problems I have ever had and read about for whichever regional Google usually indicates that the server location appears to be one of the defining factors.
I have .com's, .co.uk's, .biz's and .info's all in the English language on a UK server which all perform well in both .com and .co.uk. They all also perform well in every Google in practically every language when using the www option. I haven't tried all of them so cannot say 100% for sure.
When we tried a .com with a German KW in the German language we could not even get listed on .de until we located it on a German based server.
We also had the same experience with .fr and .it not being listed until they were located on French and Italian servers.
Is it all part of the Google "local" plan for the future with server location being the determining factor for which country one is based and the results delivered?
Anyone else with any experiences? There must be!
I still stand by the hosting rule for .com domains though - if you are a UK .com you need UK hosting.
The hosting or .co.uk domain extension is really the only way to determine geographical location... unless of course that's another thing I am wrong about! :-)
(Someone please educate me if I am wrong)
Interestingly, I built a site with very specific UK content that was a .com hosted in the USA. It ranked number one for keywords in google.com, but was nowhere to be found in the UK search results. A .co.uk version of the site was then built, same hosts, and it ranked number one in both UK and elsewhere searches for same keywords.
So for me the extension is very important to Google if hosting outside of the UK.
So for me the extension is very important to Google if hosting outside of the UK.
i think that's the point. you need EITHER a TLD from that respective country (language zones like AT/CH/DE being often also regarded) OR have a .com-domain (.org, .net, etc) hosted on an IP-range belonging to that country.
i see no evidence having BOTH benefiting more than either.
Like petehall I am quite surprised and I have to admit that I have deliberately steered clear of US based servers with the background thought that our sites may disappear from .co.uk. As it is all our top ranked Google.co.uk sites are all .coms hosted in the UK and they're not moving anywhere!
As an associated question, and I know this was brought up about a year ago, however is there any really good reason why Google.com could not display the results like other Googles and show results from the USA only?
Of course there would be still be loads of sites shown in the results which were simply hosted there however it would certainly be of benefit to ourselves, and I suspect many others who trade or supply widgets internationally, since at the present time my top ranked results are above all my US customer web sites consequently we spend a lot of time filtering and forwarding enquiries etc which, theoretically, we would not receive since we should only be displayed in the www results.
And yes, we do have each country's contact page listed but, as you well know, surfers rarely read, they just click, send and expect an immediate response...
Or am I chasing up a blind alley here?
Do Google not want to do this or have they actually experimented with it and it did not work?
What about Yahoo though? I've just checked and my 1&1.co.uk based .com is included in the UK only search - maybe their geolocation is based on the fact that when my .com first appeared it was UK hosted.
Happened to a clients' site last year, host bought a bunch of Dutch IPs and put her on one, site fell out of the "pages from Ireland" section until those IPs were re-registered as Irish.
Not all hosts will do that automatically, this one was under pressure ;-)
Digital Point has a handy tool to show the site Geolocation...
When I search for my main keyword using google.de and selecting 'seiten aus Deutschland' (pages IN Germany), not one of my competitors sites comes up, BUT mine do! Even the .com
This obviously means that although the .com and .co.uk sites are on a German server, google.com only ranks the .com as being relevant because it's a .com....the .co.uk doesn't rank in the uk because google.com sees it as a german based business looking for UK trade! It's sort of spamming I guess.
Surely this proves 100% that google are leaving my uk site high and dry because 1and1 don't use uk servers.
I agree with the posting that said that 1and1 should advise of this before their clients buy. This could be destroying an SEO's work without them knowing.
I THINK this has QED'd the whole thing but you may have over thoughts.
That TLD is enough for it to be listed in "pages from the UK", if it's listed but doesn't rank is a different story...probably duplicate content filter.
Surely this proves 100% that google are leaving my uk site high and dry because 1and1 don't use uk servers.
No.
I think you need to read the thread again. I have several .co.uk sites hosted by 1&1 and none of them have suffered through this. They are all seen as UK sites because, I assume, they have .co.uk TLDs.
I am not here to fly the flag for 1&1 but I can only tell it like it is. My overwhelming evidence is that hosting .co.uk sites in Germany makes no difference.
If you have more than one domain use your strongest (oldest with most links) and pace a 301 redirect to it from the others.
I guarantee you will not be disappointed...
My competitors in the Uk with .co.uk sites aren't there when I do the same so why am I? It is the only thing that seperates us from them. We have higher PR, more backlinks and higher KW density, so what else could it possibly be?
In fact if I search for "co uk" with the 'Seiten aus Deutschland' then I don't get any .co.uk sites in the response. In fact, I have yet to see any co.uk in the german only results
