Physical Server Location, And impact on SEO Options

[rynert]

What is the latest thinking on the impact of having a server located within a country other than your target audience?

I need to move my sites to a new dedicated server.

Any UK dedicated server providers that I look out (that seem established and scaleable) are very expensive, and as they can't justify the cost on hardware/bandwidth grounds, they do so on 'oil generators' and 'support' and 'service'.

If I look at 1and1, they cost about 40-50% for comparable offerings. Simple things like 8 extra IPs for 99p per month, rather than 1IP for £10 per month - really annoys to see inflated prices for what is essentially a zero cost item.

Sorry, ranted a bit there.

Question is, what harm am I likely to do if all my (UK) sites suddenly move home and go live in Germany?

[eKstreme]

This subject came up last year. It kicked off with this Google post and also Rand's post. The basic idea is this:

For Google:
1. If you have a country-specific TLD (like .ca or .co.uk) then the site will be more favored for the localized SEs (like google.ca and google.co.uk).
2. If the site has a generic TLD (e.g. .com), then the geolocation of its hosting will give the same information.

Y and MSN do another thing: if you have a generic TLD, WHO links to the site gives it preferential geographical treatment. So if a ton of UK sites link to a .com, that .com is effectively treated as a UK site.

All of this lead me to write a tool, the domain geolocator, to help you map sites.

Pierre

[rynert]

For Google:
1. If you have a country-specific TLD (like .ca or .co.uk) then the site will be more favored for the localized SEs (like google.ca and google.co.uk).
2. If the site has a generic TLD (e.g. .com), then the geolocation of its hosting will give the same information.

Do we know for sure that G will see domain.co.uk and 100% treat as a UK site, and rank in google.co.uk no different whether the physical server is in the UK, Germany or on the Moon?

With domain.com - I am stuffed then if I move from the UK

[eKstreme]

I don't have much more info apart from the references I quoted above. For some odd reason, the subject died down really quickly after it surged last summer. I'd love to hear more insight!

Pierre

[rynert]

Would be good if you could specify your target country, like you can specify whether to use www or no www.

[kestrel]

If appropriate, you might want to submit the site to Google Maps. This may or may not help your geo targeting in the natural results but it can't hurt.

Try and get a link from a site that is considered an authority, or at least highly relevant, to the geo location being targeted.

Also, get the geo location in the anchor text of inbound links.

If appropriate, include the business address including full postcode, in the footer of every page. A telephone number with international dialing code should also help.

K

[Rachel_in_Brighton]

Our organization has one website, but targets the US (primary market), the UK, Canada and Australia.

Our website URL ends .org, but if we also want to rank well in UK, Canada and Australia, should we create mirror content at .org.uk, etc, etc, or would this get us penalized for duplicate content?

Any thoughts would be gratefully received! Thanks!