Does using a Canadian host hurt US results?

[mgpapas]

I currently host my international, though primarily U.S. site on a canadian server. I know this gives my site a higher position on google.ca searches and have been aware of the fact that this is a generally the case.
I am wondering however if this is hurting my position on the U.S. google or other foreign googles and if I would be better off hosting here.

[irishaff]

Best to host in the country you are targetting. This will become more important IMHO over time.

[texasville]

I would say test it out. Run your search terms thru a dc in canada and then run them thru one that is u s based.

[Dugger]

I host a few sites on servers based in Canada that target US keywords and the sites rank right at the top for their competitive keywords. There is no difference whether the server is in Canada of the US.

[wheel]

A google tech confirmed at WebmasterWorld in New Orleans that this was something that they looked at. Or he suggested that I should host in the country I was targetting - either way he made it clear this was a consideration, albeit a very small one. Not one I'd be concerned about personally.

I also host in Canada but target US search terms. However, it turns out that the IP addresses I have from my datacenter are actually US :), they're assigning them I guess from their US company. So, cool.

But now I think about it, maybe this explains why my Canadian clients do so well on google.com, but a bit less well on google.ca. Hmmmmm.....

[Dugger]

The only time it is a consideration is of you are searching on Google.ca and you click on "search only pages from Canada" - then it gives sites with canadian IP numbers a boost.

Sites hosted on US servers are not given a boost in Google.com and there is no Google.us so if you are targeting US keywords it does not matter where a site is hosted - the results are the same when searching on Google.com

[wheel]

>>Sites hosted on US servers are not given a boost in Google.com and there is no Google.us so if you are targeting US keywords it does not matter where a site is hosted - the results are the same when searching on Google.com

What you're implying (that location of your host doesn't matter) is in direct contradiction to what the google tech told me.

However I don't think it matters much. But that I don't really know how much, mostly speculating.

[Dugger]

It is not a contradiction. As the Googole tech suggested, it is helpful to host in the country that you are targeting (because it helps for those times when a searcher is just searching results from that particular country) - except if you are targeting the USA - then it does not matter.

[irishaff]

I am quite confident to say that it does and it makes sense that it does. I see my UK sites shading it above big players for competitive terms globally when search for in the UK. Why because my site is hosted in the UK. I moved a smaller domain out of the UK for technical reasons and it dropped six pages in the .co.uk results and has not bounced back. Could have been something else , like the everfux ..but i dont think so.

[koen]

If you know that you rank better in canada when you're server is located there, it's only logical that you won't rank as well on other international searches. If those other national versions do the same, and display results from their land higher, there's less place for your site on top, which means it will go down in the results.

[Dugger]

The title of this post was "Does using a Canadian host hurt US results?" - and the answer is no. US results are the same and Canadian results are better if a searcher is searching just for results from Canada. The same applies with other country versions of Google.

[MHes]

>and there is no Google.us

[google.com...]

[Dugger]

Searches mostly government sites [.gov, .mil]

[wheel]

>>
The title of this post was "Does using a Canadian host hurt US results?" - and the answer is no

I read the title of the post. And that's the exact case I asked the Google tech, because it's my exact situation (or I thought it was when I assumed my toronto data center had a Canadian IP). And he disagreed with you.

[koen]

I'll say it differently:

I'm a belgian user and use google.be. Google.be shows more results from be, nl, de (the neighbouring countries) than when I search with google.com. So being not located in on of these neighbouring countries hurts when I search with google.be. Hosting in the US hurts when I search with google.be.

Apply the same for canada: searching with google.ca -> being hosted in the US probably hurts when people search with google.ca. Not when they seach with google.com.

[irishaff]

so then the only missing bit is if people are redirected to google.ca when they type google.com eh voila...

[Dave_B]

I hosted my main site in Canada for several years, I moved it to a US host about 16 months ago. I can say that I have seen no difference.

[koen]

What I see with google.be is that on the first results page there are about 2-3 "geographic closer" results on average. So my prediction would be, if all else is the same, that one would lose 2-3 places on a nationalized search when you're hosted somewhere far away.

[lgn1]

On Google.com we are located on Page 8, and Page 1 for Google.ca (with search only Canadian sites not checked), and its been this way for months.

We moved to a dedicated server in the USA, about a week ago. I expect our rank on the US site to improve.

Regardless, MSN does geotarget by ISP location, so its always best to host from the country you are most interested in getting sales from.

I should know in about 6 weeks, if changing the ISP to the USA made a difference, and I post my findings.

[Dugger]

>>Regardless, MSN does geotarget by ISP location, so its always best to host from the country you are most interested in getting sales from.

I have sites hosted in the US that target Canadian keywords and rank at the top of MSN (both .com and .ca) and vice versa. I see no difference in MSN or Google

[irishaff]

then you are very fortunate.

[irishaff]

I tried to edit the last post to ask if you had a canadian tld?

There is Im sure a trend towards promotional of
" regional sites " . Where its hosted is definatley a part of it, but not all. Perhaps most of your IBLīs are from Canadian IP s which has a greater positive effect on your rank than the slight negative being hosted out of town might have?

It could also be of course that you have no "regional competition "? Where are the sites that you compete with in .ca hosted / what is their tld?

[Dugger]

I have dozens of sites hosted on many different hosts - some of the hosts are based in canada and some are based in the US. Some of the sites target US keywords and some target Canadian keywords. The domains are all .com, .net, and .info - not.ca

I would not have many backlinks from .ca sites either - most are from US based sites using .com

[Elixir]

No.