Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
You have a site that ranks in position 30 for a particular phrase on Google.com out of worldwide sites.
Say 15 of these sites are US based and 15 are UK, so you are the 15th highest ranking UK site.
Now, when you search for the same phrase on Google.co.uk (regardless of whether you select UK pages - this IS NOT a homepage missing issue or a hosting location issue), the page ranks cira 30 out of only UK sites.
You would expect it's positon amongst the other sites to be retained, thus ranking circa 15, because the US based sites are nudged out.
It seems to me that for some reason the page is being pushed back a bit on google.co.uk
Anyone else seeing this or anyone got any thoughts on why this might be happening?
I have absolutely no idea why this happens but I have seen it often enough to know that it wasn't a 1 off.
Yes, it is on a UK server, always has been.
It is a .com but loads of UK sites that rank are .com's so I don't think it is that either.
Yes, we have recently seen something similar happen.
We are a .com but with UK focused content. For our target kws we used to rank equally well in both google.com and google.co.uk. We were temporarily hosted outside the UK at which point our ranking in the .co.uk index dropped . We have
now changed hosts and are now physically hosted on UK servers - but our ranking still remains low in google.co.uk.
Was hoping that this was just an artefact of our recent changes but having seen a variety of posts describing similar problems, I'm wondering if this is a symptom of a deeper problem.
Has anyone had any luck in getting google to adjust a site's
ranking in local indices?
Teri
Having a .com hosted outside of the UK is always going to cause you to not rank well on google.co.uk - it could well be an aftereffect of that in your case.
My site has never been hosted outside of the UK.
I disagree, labeling this issue as a .com v's .co.uk domain issue is missing the point.
I'd tried to stress that when I started this thread, the google.co.uk SERPS are full of .com's for the industry I'm talking about, it is not a TLD issue.
My site is #1 for "results from the web" and #11 "from UK"
.co.uk site
UK servers
Was OK most of last week,
Just this morning reverted to problem for "from UK"
*sigh*
Good point, have thought about that one, but looking at the links of the sites that do rank on google.co.uk, they show a mix of locations, same as mine.
Hi
Didnt mean to say this is always the case. I mean theres a continual and increasing trend to have .coms perform best on .com and .co/uks best on .co.uk regardless of where they are hosted. This may be targetted at certain areas of the serps. Its been another trend that new algo movements come in waves hitting different sectors at different times, as well certain types of searches. In this regard your case is not a major anomaly. How those other .coms perform on .co.uk and perform better than you even though they dont do well on .com itself will come down to other factors. These may include the type of sites that link to them. if they have more uk assocaited domains link to them i would expect them to do better on .co.uk then .com. But there appears to be many factors at play. Though at first glance it would seem strange than as a uk hosted sit you cant maintain rankings over us based .com on .co.uk, when you analys it futher the pattern is still there to show this is an intented serps.
US companies charge considerably less for hosting than UK ones. I have bandwidth hungry sites and UK hosting would be a disaster. It is pointless to penalise or not index a site on the basis of where it is hosted.
I've SEOed those sites mainly by getting links from UK sites, especially authority ones. I've got links from other parts of the world as well but this has not hurt much. Ranking keeps getting better and better in Google's SERPs.
Check for other possible filters or penalties. Duplicates, too similar titles, keyword overstuffing in the site's navigation, etc. More importantly check your backlinks and try to focus on getting relevant UK audience addressed sites link to you.
We'll have to differ on this as in can have an effect depending on the conditions/combinations and what you are trying to achieve.
I also have a suspicion about the source of IBL's. But alot of the sites in my sector have IBL's from all over the world, might well be a factor though.
soapystar - I agree there are several factors at play here, trying to spark discussion to fathom them out!
