Questions about domain age and IP location

[malcolmcroucher]

Google takes many things into consideration when calculating your search results , however I have been thinking and I am struggling to find relevancy of two area's of Googles Search criteria which I will explain below.

1. Age of Domain.

A certain page gets better results if it on an aged domain, however I struggle to find reasons for this. Google tends to focus on the somewhat academic and I feel this is an academic inclusion which actually has no real bearing on results.

I am not convinced that two domains competing for the 1st position that the domain aged oldest will be more relevant. This could actually hinder the younger domain as the older domain should have more links and is older. If the younger domain has more relevant content to a particular search term then it will have a biased result.

2. The Ip Address of the Website.

As most sites that have an international audience , and a merchant account that particular site can get purchases from any country. I feel that the web hosting industry has that issue , whereby hosting is dirt cheap in some countries if not free. This could mean a san francisco site could be hosted in london ( and i think as the internet expands we will find more and more of this ) this will give the site a distict disadvantage over rivals.

This is especially true for localised search.

I wondering if anyone else has any thoughts on this ? And if anyone cares to explain to me why my thinking is incorrect .

Regards

Malcolm

[tedster]

I am not convinced that two domains competing for the 1st position that the domain aged oldest will be more relevant.

I'd say you're right about that. And if the younger page's relevance score is high enough, it CAN outrank the more aged domain. But age is more than a count of years - it's all the trust factors that can be built over that entire history. A ten year old domain with a weak or even shady past will not automaically have any advantage at all.

This could mean a san francisco site could be hosted in london... this will give the site a distict disadvantage over rivals.

Yes, that's true. The IP address on its own is not a strong signal. But it is ONE signal among many that are in the mix. If you're serious about being a valued local resource, local hosting is a help.

When it comes to localized results, recently it seems that Google is devaluing those cookie cutter sites that take the same page template and just switch out a few words dynamically. They are working harder to identify TRUE localized resources and tyhe IP address is part of this, but only a part.

[Simsi]

Where is the logic in Google's decision to take hosting location into account? How can it possibly have arrived to the conclusion that because a site is hosted in A, it's principle audience must be in A ? I never understood that.

[wheel]

because if you're principle audience is the US, you're a bit foolish to host in the UK - so most people don't.

The line blurs a bit from Canada/US and Britian/UK since they're geographically similiar and the borders are relatively transparent. But again, it's a pretty safe assumption since most people would automatically host where they're targetting.