Varying hosting location with domain TLD

Can this help reach two markets?

[Nick0r]

I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with something like the following:

Regestering a .co.uk domain.
Hosting it in the USA.

Does this allow you to rank well in both these markets, rather than having .co.uk & UK Hosting where you'll pretty much guarentee only to rank decently in the UK version of google?

[rainborick]

Yes, all three major search engines will consider the Country Code Top Level Domain name to set a domain's geo-location. This is more important than many people realize because the search engines now use geo-location as a very important factor in ALL searches in their country-specific sites, even when the user does not select the in-country-only results option.

[Nick0r]

Thanks for the feedback. What I'm saying is, does having both .co.uk and UK hosting mean it's gonna be really hard to rank in G.com, and having .co.uk and USA hosting mean you won't rank as well in .co.uk but you have a better chance in .com?

[rainborick]

I don't know how this issue affects your rankings in google.com. I do know that having a .co.uk domain name will make a big positive difference in your rankings in google.co.uk. The USA hosting might actually let you straddle the fence and have the best of both worlds, so to speak. But at the moment, some .com sites that are hosted in the UK aren't being properly geo-located by google.co.uk, so if the UK market is at all important to you, I would suggest that you stay with the .co.uk domain name.

[leadegroot]

I would love an answer to this, and have a project planned that may let me know the answer (as soon as it percolates to the top of the project list...)
Buy a .au domain and host it in the uk.
Does this get me Australian *and* UK rankings?
It seems possible, as I have a theory that they decide the results by saying 'does the site meet these conditions?' rather than 'what country-code?' flag have we set for this site.
I don't know, but its going to be really interesting to find out :)

(At the same time, I would love it if Google would add a 'pick your preferred country' drop down in Sitemaps - it would save me so much money in hosting fees :))

[centime]

in my limited experience

.co.uk sites rank best for google.co.uk searches, infact they usually seem to beat equivalent .coms, .net etc

.co.uk sites only rank in google.com for searches from UK IPs

in general, methinks any established an popular cctld like .co.uk will rank without geo restriction in its own market, but will absolutely tank anywhere else

I think, for an international site , one should take .com, .net

horses for courses :-)