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It's important that my IP address is in the UK, so not sure which way to go from here.
> As ALL of my clients for ALL of my domains come from the UK, this is
> very critical.
[The reply says that the site is physically hosted in the UK and that the use of IP addresses for location is flawed]
> Are you saying that the IP address's for my domains are not,
> physically, or otherwise, in the UK?
[The reply says that IPs are not physical but virtual and that they don't have location. The host uses a supplier who's head office is outside the UK]
The hosting provider are an immense organisation, their IP space supports MILLIONS of domain names. Clearly these are all not actually located in Amsterdam though, this is merely where the company registered the IP space.
[edited by: ciml at 2:36 pm (utc) on Jan. 29, 2005]
[edit reason] No email quotes please. [/edit]
Your sites are UK hosted physically. Any lookup tool that uses IP address as a basis for location is flawed.
True, but unfortunately that's what the Search Engines do, as any Hosting company should know. How else would they do it?
You need either a .UK domain name or a UK IP address.
[hosting provider] are an immense organisation, their IP space supports MILLIONS of domain names. Clearly these are all not actually located in Amsterdam though, this is merely where the company registered the IP space.
And thereby these specific domains appear to be from The Netherlands.
Check out the thread we've had about "1&1" sites all hosted in Germany
[webmasterworld.com...]
They're trying to batter you into submission by saying that they're
an immense organisation
They'll not miss you plus you can get a much better deal elsewhere and with genuine UK hosting:-)
[edited by: ciml at 2:40 pm (utc) on Jan. 29, 2005]
[edit reason] Examplified [/edit]
should appear in the UK only pages wherever it is hosted
Should, but I wouldn't risk it.
To be safe locate in the UK and your .com will be fine, no need for a .co.uk.
I live in the UK, and all of my clients come from the UK, my domain is a .com, and before today, I was under the impression that my domains IP was in the UK, but seeing results in Google, has led me to this re-think stage ;-(
The hosts are 34sp and they've been good in most other ways, but this could be the time to leave.
I agree however MSIE, Firefox and Opera built in Google search boxes all default to .com...well, mine do anyway!
Certainly our logs show an increase of .co.uk referrals but not an increase in total referrals simply because we are #1 in both.
Has anyone noticed a big increase in .co.uk referral visitors? I would guess that some should have seen a dramatic increase in the specific big money keyword sectors with the US sites mostly not being displayed.
Any ideas?
In addition to the IP location of the host, some geo based systems interrogate the whois data base to further determine the site's location.
A while back we had same problem...but it did get resolved (by itself or by hosting company making a change I dont know about)...the site is now doing ok with the uk filter being selected.
FigtingFalcon
At least one major hosting provider has servers in the UK that Google treats as being in the UK, and servers in the UK that Google treats as not being in the UK.
Sometimes providers make mistakes (I once proved to a host that a particular server was not where they thought it was - by dividing the width of the Atlantic by c), but sometimes geolocation companies make mistakes. There are a lot of IP addresses to identify, and as far as I can remember Google use several geolocation providers.
The only reliable test I have is to find a .com domain on the IP range in question and see if it's in the 'pages from the UK' search.
> Has anyone noticed a big increase in .co.uk referral visitors?
Yes, and some aggregated referral stat's I saw also seemed to show a significant change.
At least one major hosting provider has servers in the UK that Google treats as being in the UK, and servers in the UK that Google treats as not being in the UK.
That's interesting.
I was going to suggest that since there are many UK posters to this forum, would it not be a good idea to create a list of the known recognised UK IP's for those that require it rather than us all having to sticky each other?
However if a UK major host has a problem with this then we'll just have to keep advising one another privately.
Meanwhile I'm staying where I am, they're good:-)) <snip>
[edited by: ciml at 4:20 pm (utc) on Jan. 29, 2005]
[edit reason] See StickyMail [/edit]