Will an International CDN Affect Geo-located SERPs?

[dhaliwal]

Hi Everyone.
Our hosting company started offering CDN (content delivery network) and as we are having traffic from various countries, we wish to use CDN to improve speed for end users and give our website a performance boost.

As in CDN, the content will be served from different servers located across the world, do you think Google rankings can change ?

As the website won't remain hosted in US, but will be considered by Search Engines as hosted at different locations, probably in every local area ?

The current provider has nearly 40 different servers, so it means that site will be served from 40 different geo locations.

Will there be a change in SERP for local results ?

Looking for views from experienced members on WebmasterWorld.

Also, if someone has already used CDN, have you noticed any changes ?

[tedster]

I've worked with several sites who use one of the major CDNs, and there has not been any issue with geolocation that I'm aware of. However, this is an excellent question and I don't have certainty about it.

As long as googlebot is treated the same as any other user-agent from the same region, I think you'll be fine. But if there are complex load-balancing routines involved that end up using a fail-over server in a remote geographical region, then I can see the potential for some confusion.

However, as I said, I'm not aware of any problems actually showing up in practice. I would imagine, since only the more high traffic websites would tend to use a CDN, that Google has put some serious resources behind getting it right.

[dhaliwal]

Yes, this seems logical.

However, i guess google may get confused about the actual location (or say country wise ranking) of the website which is served from different places.

Recently, i am quite concerned about shifting the server as it can raise flag at google. Don't want to mess up anything.

[tedster]

i am quite concerned about shifting the server as it can raise flag at google

Not in and of itself. I've changed IP addresses and even web hosts for websites with no effect on ranking.

Here's a real plus for you: servers that are part of a content distribution network are also KNOWN to be part of a content distribution network. The IP addresses are publicly assigned, so Google's got that data. If there was a serious problem, companies like Akamai would be all over it.

[dhaliwal]

If Google got the record of servers under CDN, that sounds a good thing.
Akamai is quite expensive, i am giving it a shot with Softlayer.

[tedster]

Softlayer's CDN offering is called CloudLayer - and it is offered through a partnership with Internap, one of the pioneers in CDN.

What I wrote above I'm pretty certain about -- if the service you are using employs the original "application server" or ASP style of CDN service. However, there is a more recent development in CDN service that uses a P2P technology to bring down costs. Internap does offer that technology as well as ASP. If your service will be using P2P CDN technology then I'm less certain, though still pretty sure, of what I wrote.

I'd suggest inquiring directly of your service provider about the effect of the service you are considering on rankings that are sensitive to geo-location in Google. I'm also going to continue research into this question.

[johnser]

Hi
Very good timing with this thread

Looking at a site currently. Am seeing 8 IPs for the domain across multiple countries. Carnage on the SERPs.

Huge sites like MTV etc have the same setup using Akami also. No idea if they're doing well in G?

Is it possible that G could be confused with this IP stuff from a geo-ranking perspective?

J

[dhaliwal]

Thanks for your very helpful response Tedster.

And Johnser, i am not getting you completely.

I guess you mean that you are currently monitoring a website, hosted on 8 different locations, has got lower SERPs.

Akamai is quite expensive (around 70- 120 cents per GB), so using their service is not possible for our client.