Inktomi now has Geo filtering of .com domains

Recent change?

[IanTurner]

I have noticed that Inktomi now appears to have some kind of UK.com geofiltering in place. Definitely seen in MSN.co.uk results. Anyone know how long this has been in place?

[4eyes]

I checked a .com site earlier today (when investigating the BBC/Inktomi thing) and it was fine - now its classed as non-uk.

Their filtering has been all over the place recently - they have lost the plot IMO.

[jmccormac]

Sounds like they are using an IP based filtering routine. It is a cheap and nasty method used by Google as well to some extent.

With a significant percentage of UK websites hosted outside the UK, this geolocation thing is going to cause a lot of problems. For Ireland, the non Irish sites is running at about 50%+. For the UK, I'd guess, based on research, it was in the region of 15-30%. From what I rem this early in the morning, I had identified about 1.6 Million UK websites, so the percentages for the missing webspace are significant, especially if it is your website that it is wrongly categorised by the SEs. With US Dollar/STG/Euro differentials, it makes more sense to host in the US.

I wonder if Inktomi would be interested in my research? All I got from Google was a canned reply e-mail :)

Regards...jmcc

[glengara]

I was surprised by some results yesterday on MSN.com, thought it was them doing the filtering.
So if it's Inktomi that's doing it, MSN would have to send the IP of the search query, right?

[IanTurner]

There is usually about a 500% drop in response speed from US based hosting in comparison with UK based hosting.

[jmccormac]

Depends on the type of filtering glengara. The server/SE side filtering would involve breaking down the search index geographically so that the results would be relevant to the country. Thus if you are searching for pages from the UK or Ireland, you would get pages from the UK or Ireland. This is where the IP filtering comes in for the results. The other type of IP filtering is on the incoming side so that the user's IP would be determined and then the session would be handed off to the local variant - as in with Irish IPs, the hand off is to google.ie rather than google.com. The IP based webserver location approach is an improvement over what other SEs were doing but it is still a pretty fscked way of doing things because of the floating websites (sites actually related to one country but hosted in another).

Regards...jmcc

[Crazy_Fool]

if uk site owners can't (or won't) host in the uk, then it's their hard luck if they get left out of geo-filtered SERPS.

hosting in the uk is very cheap now - as cheap as or even cheaper than the usa. there is no excuse for not buying british.

[Bobby_Davro]

I probably won't host in the UK again, based on past experience. I think that we have tried four different UK hosting companies, and they have ranged from poor to appalling. These were the companies that we thought looked reliable at the time. And yes one of them was <snip>, before their reputation spread.

Having found an excellent US host, I can't see myself swapping back any time soon.

The only problem that we encountered relating to the geography of hosting was an old .com site hosted in the US, which has never been identified as a UK specific site. Since that time, we have only ever used .co.uk for UK sites, and we haven't had any problems with geo-filtering.

[edited by: engine at 2:58 pm (utc) on Mar. 26, 2003]
[edit reason] no specifcs, thanks [/edit]

[SinclairUser]

Bobby_Davro - I agree with your statements.

I am a webmaster who has lived and worked in the US on web projects.

I returned to the UK after 10 years in the US and was shocked by how "left behind" the UK was. UK hosting companies are arrogant and sometimes downright rude! This would never happen in the US which is customer service oriented. Being British gives me a unique view of the state of play here and the brits seem to be experts at fooling themslves that they are "ahead of the curve" and technically superior - HA!. Kids in America have powerful computers with robust, fast internet connections in their bedrooms that would put some UK hosting companies to shame.
It would also help if the brits spent more time resolving technical problerms instead of trying to blame you for the problem!

Having said all that - I have found a good hosting company here that is value for money. but give me good old American customer service anytime.

[kara_b]

But it also works both ways.

When searching for a particular large UK financial company, a US company of the same name is returned in Inktomi's supposedly 'geofiltered' results.

It just doesn't seem to work very well.