SE Detecting country - domain registrant?

[Dan_C]

When the search engines are categorising your site to a country are they looking at the domain registrant information i.e. who the owner of the domain is? or is it 'ONLY' the ip address of where the site is hosted?.
Does anyone know for certain?
TIA

[outrun]

Dan_C Try a site search which is located at the top of the page there is many discussions on this already.
1st Its seems to go on the extension for e.g. "com.au".
2nd If its just a .com then the IP address.
3rd and for google also the DMOZ listings, but there are more factors do a search :).

regards,
Mark

[Dan_C]

Dan_C Try a site search which is located at the top of the page there is many discussions on this already.
1st Its seems to go on the extension for e.g. "com.au".
2nd If its just a .com then the IP address.
3rd and for google also the DMOZ listings, but there are more factors do a search :).
regards,
Mark

Hi Mark
I've been searching this site for an hour trying to find the answer but without success.

To confirm i have a .com, hosted in the USA but my domain registrant details is showing as a UK owner

Are you saying the answer to my question is No, and that the search engines do not take into account the domain registrants details/location?.
TIA

[outrun]

To the best of my knowledge search engines do not check the whois information of a domain so the simple answer to your question is no, the ".com" is hosted in the US the IP address is therefore a US one. Maybe you can go to DMOZ.org and have it listed as UK site but if you want a sure fire way to be listed under UK searches your best option would be to have it as CO.UK or have the ".com" hosted in the UK.

regards,
Mark

[heini]

Confirmed. If the TLD is generic it's the IP which counts. This is a problem especially for the members from the UK, Canada etc, since IP's are not always a good indicator of where a site belongs, for several reasons.