American Site, where should I host it?

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American Site, where should I host it?

Mark_A

3:28 pm on Jul 30, 2010 (gmt 0)

I am supposing I should host it in the US if I want good results in the Google natural listings, but is that true? is that the case? Does anyone have any evidence?

tedster

4:44 pm on Jul 30, 2010 (gmt 0)

Does this domain use one of the "international" TLDs, Mark - com, org, net, biz, info, tv etc?

Mark_A

11:51 am on Aug 9, 2010 (gmt 0)

Hi tedster, sorry for the delay, I had some time off !

Yes, it is a .com domain.

tedster

5:27 pm on Aug 9, 2010 (gmt 0)

By default, a .com is treated as an internationally targeted domain - and hosting country is a relatively minor signal. I watch several .com websites who compete quite well and are hosted in Asia. So I don't see evidence that hosting outside the US is any kind of negative for ranking on google.com.

Mark_A

7:32 am on Aug 10, 2010 (gmt 0)

Oh, that is interesting. Will bear in mind.

Thanks

aristotle

1:56 pm on Aug 10, 2010 (gmt 0)

I'm not sure this would help, but you can set a geographic target for the site in Google Webmaster Tools.

pontifex

4:49 pm on Aug 10, 2010 (gmt 0)

Tedster, rarely enough - but I disagree :-) ... If you want to rank in the US it helps that your domain (whatever it is) is

a) in english <html lang="en">

and

b) resolves to a US IP number

You say it is a minor signal and I agree, but from the stuff you CAN influence it is a no-brainer to setup a site behind a US IP, if you want to rank there.

If one already has a solid infrastructure somewhere else and you do not want to take the burden of extra hardware, there is a simple trick:

Rent a Linux VPS (i use PowerVPS, but there are plenty) and install SQUID.

Squid is a free proxy you can configure to run as a reverse proxy.

Lets say you have a VPS with IP number 1.2.3.4 in the US and the proxy fetches everything from 4.3.2.1 in Asia, Google does not see that.

Configuration and setup is less than 1 hour work and if you take like 3 cheap VPSes with a round robin domain direction, you even got some kind of failsafe...

AND it caches the static content as a nice add-on!

Example config:

------------------------------------
http_port your.us.ip.number:80 vhost vport

visible_hostname www.yourlocaldomain.com

cache_peer_access NAME allow http

cache_peer your.asia.ip.number parent 80 0 no-query originserver sourcehash name=NAME login=PASS

collapsed_forwarding on
refresh_stale_hit 600 seconds
acl all src 0/0
http_access allow all

acl FTP proto FTP
always_direct allow FTP

cache_mem 256 MB
cache_swap_low 90
cache_swap_high 95

cache_dir ufs /opt/squid 10000 16 256

max_filedesc 14000

maximum_object_size 1024 KB
maximum_object_size_in_memory 384 KB
----------------------------------------------

And you have your local "webserver" that fetches the data from your hosting center!

Cheers,
P!

tedster

5:08 pm on Aug 10, 2010 (gmt 0)

Thanks for that, pontifex - pretty neat! I don't disagree at all, but I also wasn't completely sure what the opening question was getting at. Yes, even a minor signal is worth sending if you can do it without getting into major issues.

Maurice

8:48 am on Aug 11, 2010 (gmt 0)

I agree with @tedster also if you host in your target country you will be closer (in network terms)to your customers and this has adavatages in speed (now a factor in ranking) and latency

Lame_Wolf

9:07 am on Aug 11, 2010 (gmt 0)

adavatages in speed (now a factor in ranking)

Fact or FUD ?

I've seen nothing as proof.

HuskyPup

12:43 pm on Aug 11, 2010 (gmt 0)

Fact or FUD ?

Nothing has been confirmed about this and it's very unlikely to happen until Google buy up a few data centres and "force" us to host our sites there to enable better rankings!

Lame_Wolf

1:00 pm on Aug 11, 2010 (gmt 0)

Nothing has been confirmed about this and it's very unlikely to happen until Google buy up a few data centres and "force" us to host our sites there to enable better rankings!

So, at present it is FUD. Thought so.

tedster

5:30 pm on Aug 11, 2010 (gmt 0)

The only official word I know of has been from Matt Cutts. He described site speed as a minor ranking factor that comes into play as a kind of "tie breaker" in very close ranking competitions -- and this happens for less than 10% of query terms.

In my opinion, the FUD is coming from some parts of the webmaster and SEO community who are latching on to the "latest big thing". This unfortunate pattern shows up a lot in web development altogether, and not just in the area of SEO.

Lame_Wolf

6:28 pm on Aug 11, 2010 (gmt 0)

In my opinion, the FUD is coming from some parts of the webmaster and SEO community who are latching on to the "latest big thing". This unfortunate pattern shows up a lot in web development altogether, and not just in the area of SEO.

Totally agree.
The only time speed bothers me is when my site is slow/sluggish. I'm not bothered how fast it is.

Maurice

9:38 am on Aug 12, 2010 (gmt 0)

@Lame_Wolf @tedster

well some of us do work in a competitive markets :-) you do want to look at page speed both from a SEO perspective and also a slow site will kill your bounce rates as users hit the back button.

A related q is does google look at bounce rates ie where people goto a serp and than quickly go back and select another link.

LameWolf "The only time speed bothers me is when my site is slow/sluggish. I'm not bothered how fast it is"

so which one is it ? you just contradicted your self there.