Local Domains on Offshore Servers?

What is the impact?

[Brado12]

Hey guys

Can anyone care to answer this one for me?
If I purchase a .co.uk domain, but host the domain on a US based server, will that affect my local rankings for Google UK?

Regards,
Brado

[makemetop]

Very marginally - but for most, not enough to notice. From my observations in reasonably competitive areas - a couple of positions only.

[Brado12]

Won't Google notice the host's IP address?

[makemetop]

It puts much more value on the domain. A .co.uk will come up higher on Google UK even if you hosted in China! The IP location only has a slight deflationary value if you have 3 or 4 UK sites all of equal ranking "power" - you may lose a position or 2. If that is not the case - it really isn't worth worrying about.

My original hosting company moved my .co.uk site from the US to UK (where it had been) and I moved up a couple of places - then to Germany when it dropped 1. Including these marginal movements - it has been in the top 5 consistently for 6 years.

[Brado12]

Ok thanks!

But a position or 2 can make a big difference in traffic.
I at least want to be on the first page for a local search term. It seems pretty easy. All the .co.uk domains rank well. And then you have .com's and .net's that fill the void.

Regards,
Brado

[Robert Charlton]

FYI, there are a bunch of threads about geo search on Google listed in the Google Hot Topics [webmasterworld.com] section, pinned to the top of the Google Search forum home page.

Here's the geo section, for reference...

-- GEO-TARGETED SEARCH --
Seeing Country-Located Results [webmasterworld.com] - from outside the country
Country TLDs [webmasterworld.com] - ranking and country domain extensions
Tell Google Your Site Location [webmasterworld.com] - with Webmaster Tools
How To Show Up As A Map [webmasterworld.com] - in local results box

[vincevincevince]

So long as the server is fast, no effect I've noticed.

[inbound]

I agree that the physical location of hosting is low down on the list of factors that Google considers, but I'd consider users too. We host in the UK and the US with a well respected host, and do so to cut delays to an absolute minimum (the hops over the Atlantic can become a problem when you aim to fully deliver pages in under a second). I suppose it depends on where your visitors are from aswell as cost/maintenance issues.

Back to the Google part of this though, get links from the UK if you are targeting the UK... Google loves that :)