Good Rankings for US site in Canada -- but not in the US

[sobole]

Hi,
Why would you suppose that I have great rankings for my keywords in Canada but not is the U.S. where I am based?

D

[pxc433]

I'm assuming your website is hosted in the US, and has a US IP address (check it on whois if you are not sure).

It's probably because of 'geo-positioning' - weighting results according to where the searcher is.

There is some strange stuff going on. We are a British company and rank much better in the US, where we don't sell, than the UK which is the all important home market.

A solution might be to get links from US-based sites, but I've yet to read anything convincing on this.

[sobole]

We actually are based in the US and do our sales here. Our host is based in Canada. Do you think this would have something to do with our ranking?

D

[rainborick]

Yes, the geo-location of your site is a major ranking factor. Since your site does not have a Country Code Top Level Domain Name, the major search engines will rely on the physical location of the server that hosts your site, based on its IP address, to determine your site's geo-location. While its certainly possible to rank well despite having your geo-location set incorrectly as a handicap, its an uphill battle. One you could avoid by simply changing hosts, which is practically painless.

[pxc433]

Rick is right. You should re-locate your site into a US host as soon as possible.

It's funny but hosting companies don't seem to grasp this. Our hosting company moved our site to Germany last year without telling us, and wondered why we go upset. For a short time we had a German IP address.

[new_seo]

the major search engines will rely on the physical location of the server that hosts your site, based on its IP address, to determine your site's geo-location.

Not only that.Also the server locations of those sites from where the site is getting back links,will be judged.

[rainborick]

To be clear, the major search engines use two common criteria in determining a site's geo-location: (1) the presence of a Country Code Top Level Domain Name (or CC TLD, as in "somesite.co.uk"), and (2) the physical location of the server that hosts the site based on its IP address. Google also says that they will sometimes consider the domain name registration data, but since they don't define 'sometimes' and they are the only search engine that mentions this issue, I don't consider it to be reliable.

This information is available in the Help systems of the non-US versions of the search engines. You just have to dig deeply to find it, as I did a while ago for a client. But as I also always mention, no amount of backlinks, <meta> tags, incense burning, or ritual incantations will have any effect on how the search engines determine your site's geo-location. I have confirmed this many times over the past couple of years in helping people get this problem resolved.

[new_seo]

To be clear, the major search engines use two common criteria in determining a site's geo-location: (1) the presence of a Country Code Top Level Domain Name (or CC TLD, as in "somesite.co.uk"), and (2) the physical location of the server that hosts the site based on its IP address.

My friend,you are missing the link factor.Along with this 2,that is also a factor.

[simey]

Does anyone have an idea when this became more of a factor?

I have a site that has always been hosted in australia and enjoyed very good US serps up until 3-4 months ago.

Checking the site, the serps from google.co.au are'nt that different, unless I check 'pages from australia' (a much smaller result #).

Guess it's time to switch hosts tho....

[wheel]

This seemed to change fairly extensively oh, a year ago or so? Certainly hosting in Canada helps rankings on Google.ca - and quite a bit. I've got American sites hosted in Canada that do well in the Canadian serps.

I'd assume that hosting in the US helps on Google.com...which would get to the root of your problem.

Unfortunately, hosting country in US/Canada isn't an overly reliable indicator given the porousness of the border and the ease of crossborder hosting. There's an awful lot of Canadians hosted in the US, and the reverse is true as well.

I've been told that the situation is similiar in the UK.

Interestingly, this is kind of a push for Canadians to host in Canada instead of the US.

[rainborick]

My friend,you are missing the link factor.Along with this 2,that is also a factor.

I didn't miss it. I left it out because I don't believe its correct. I've never seen backlinks mentioned in the online documentation of any of the major search engines. I've never seen a search engine representative confirm that its used for geo-location. And I've never seen evidence of it in the search engines. If someone can point to a reference in the search engine documentation that they use backlinks for geo-location, a confirmation by a search engine representative, or an example of a .com, .net, or .org domain rank in a country-specific search while being hosted outside of that country, I'll be happy to change my little speech.