Site Hosted Location and SEO

does locale of site affect SEO

[Scally_Ally]

Hello,
I was wondering how much effect the actual location of your site makes on the search results for your site.
for example:
I have a site, it is setup to serve the UK but it is hosted in Germany. I have set the locale of the site in Google webmaster tools to say it is servicing the UK (although the site is dot com).

In your opinion would you say that moving it so it is hosted in the UK would make a large difference to SEO?

Thanks in advance
Ally

[pageoneresults]

My understanding is that you want at least one of two things in this scenario. The first would be a ccTLD, the second would be a host within that country.

The ultimate scenario would be to have both, the ccTLD and the Host in the same country.

Second best would be to have the .com and host in the targeted country.

I hear different results for different scenarios. After reading various topics on the matter, I'm convinced that if you are targeting a particular market, you need to move into their neighborhood and start acting like a neighbor. ;)

That means having the ccTLD and hosting in the same country.

Does it affect SEO? I believe it does, in a big way too.

[The Contractor]

Actually I believe unless they have changed things it's who the IPs are registered to (your host).

Example: Even though you host a .com with a UK hosting company and the servers are located in the UK; if the IPs are owned by someone say in Canada, you will NOT come up for UK results only, although you will come up for Canadian sites only on google.ca

There is a handy little FREE software tool if you are running Windows to look up the actual owner of the IP. Do a search for "IP Lookup v2"

[Scally_Ally]

Thanks PageOne...

I hear exactly what you are saying, my best option would be have .uk and host in UK. Unfortunately it is too late to change the domain name, But with the hosting i could change that.

would it be something that would show up more relevant for generic searches on google.co.uk even if the user has not ticked to only select pages from the UK? Also do you think that different search engine handle this differently (i suppose that question doesnt really matter as goog has such a high market share in UK?

I have done everything else possible really, stating in the homepage text what country i am from and servicing and set the geographical target of the site in goog webmaster tools.

Ally

[Scally_Ally]

Thanks contractor.
have found out that the IP block is owned by peaople in the same country as where it is hosted.

I have also done searches on the .co.uk site and i still show up on these results when i do "search pages from uk only". Im a little confused as to why? do you think it will be because i have stated where i am and target etc.

Ally