I've been told that the reason is that my website is hosted in the USA and Has a .com address.
To be Listed on google uk what steps should i take.
1-should i get mywebsite.co.uk hosted in the UK and redirect it to the mywebsite.com site.
2-dont have any more ideas help please.
(proven)If it's a .co.uk
(proven)If it's hosted in the UK
(proven)If it has a lot of links from the UK to it
(maybe)If the whois shows the site as being UK owned
(recent theory)If you have contact details that are in the UK
(possibility)If it's visited by lots of people from the UK (with the Google toolbar installed)
(leftfield)If you use British spelling rather than AmericaniZed English
They get more wierd from here on.
I'd say getting plenty of UK links will help in more ways than one.
(proven)If it has a lot of links from the UK to it
Has this one really been proven? I would be interested to see if anyone else agrees.
Combinations:
.com or other GTLD
American spelling
Hosted in US or Europe (not UK)
Whois data set to US or Finland
No contact details on the site
Never visited by me with Google Toolbar enabled
Not search for until at the end of the experiment so no trail can be made to the true owner
No links from own sites
Even with all of the above you can force a UK listing by getting a sufficiently high proportion of UK links.
It may not be proven to be 100% effective but I'm happy to state that it's definitely a big factor in determining geography.
*** These tests are now just over a year old but I see no changes that suggest things have shifted significantly ***
what about getting a .co.uk hosted in the uk and redirect to .com would that make any difference. Or if i decided to host a .com in the uk would that hurt my google.com listing please help
Buying the .co.uk and doing a 301 re-direct wouldn't harm (even from the same host in the US).
If you make your site less US orientated and more UK focused (in the eyes of Google) I expect that you may indeed loose some ranking on Google.com. It's all down to where your biggest market is, if you serve the US and are doing well why change? If the UK is a smaller market for you but would be easier to penetrate then that may make your mind up. Good luck.
Unfortunately, it's not 100% guaranteed that hosting alone is the answer as I've seen examples where the whois for the domain registration shows up as a US registrar and the hosting is with a UK IP. Google saw this as a US-based site.
