ranking well in US, but not in Google UK, for .co.uk domain

[bode]

I've had a look around the hot topics, but I don't see anything that answers my question.

I have a .co.uk domain on a US webhost. My geotarget in webmaster tools is set to UK as a result of the .co.uk domain. I'm also ranking at the top of the local business results on Google UK (second to a spammy marketing company) for my most competitive term.

My three worded keyphrase, which includes my city, ranks quite poorly around page 8 #75 of google UK. My best result on google UK was #15 in November, but crashed to page 30 after a site redesign.

However, on iGoogle (which shows Cambridge USA) on the local bus results, places my organic result on page one, #5 and 8 depending on the phrasing. My UK competitors are also displayed on this first page.

An online serps checker which displays google.com results places two of my pages at positions 1 and 2 but #83 on google UK.

So why do I rank so poorly on google UK? Do I have anything to gain by switching to a UK webhost or would this be serps suicide?

[HuskyPup]

Ok thanks for the pointers. I'll get stuck into all that reading tomorrow!

Did you read the posts Tedster linked you to?

< note, those links are in another thread [webmasterworld.com] >

So why do I rank so poorly on google UK? Do I have anything to gain by switching to a UK webhost or would this be serps suicide?

The general consensus of opinion these days, although some have not had a problem, is that geo-targetting for the UK is becoming country server specific...I doubt losing ranking #83 would hardly be called SERPs suicide.

[edited by: tedster at 8:20 pm (utc) on Feb. 3, 2009]
[edit reason] add note [/edit]

[brotherhood of LAN]

It's worth considering moving to a UK host regardless, it will give a marginal speed benefit to UK users visiting your site.

Traditionally US hosting was cheaper but I'm not so sure now, particularly given the exchange rate.

[bode]

Yes I read that thanks, but further reading gave opposing opinions. I don't want to commit serps suicide by losing my high google.com ranking and my top positions on local along witht the complication of switching host.

But I think it's clear that my poor ranking on google uk must be down to the server location.

Finding a host with 99.5% uptime at £2 a month may be difficult to find...I don't know where to start.

[HuskyPup]

I don't know where to start.

There are some UK hosts offering free hosting for smaller sites and many offering for £2-5 per month with reasonable services. Type this into Google.co.uk "free web hosting".

Obviously your site is not mission critical otherwise you would be quite willing to pay for professional hosting.

[brotherhood of LAN]

The very cheap ones tend to have limited webspace/bandwidth but can still offer services like SSH access, cronjobs etc.