Does hosting a .com in Ireland affect Google ranking in US?

[The Nightfly]

I am working with an Irish software company whose product is aimed at a global market but primarily the US. We are revamping our website and moving from its current shared hosting in the US to a VPS hosted in Ireland. Will this have a negative impact on our Google ranking for US users, in comparison to having it physically hosted in the US? [FONT=&quot]If so, how significant a factor is the hosting location in the context of all the other factors Google takes into account? [/FONT]We have a .com domain btw.

I know we can use the Google webmaster tools to set the geographic location to the US, but will that affect our ranking in other countries such as Australia? If we set the geographic location to unlisted, will Google then rank us lower for searches in the US by virtue of us having an Irish IP address?

Any advice would be welcome. Thanks!

Frank.

 

[mneylon]

Focus on the content and the site's speed

Getting overly fixated on how Google may or may not "view" a site based on its IP isn't a good idea

 

[The Nightfly]

As it happens, we have already taken out a VPS subscription with a hosting company that might be well-known to you so it's not that we are fixated on the IP address. The reason I'm asking is because my client is asking me, and I don't want them to say to me in 6 months time "we should have got it hosted in the US".

So I think it's a valid question: all other things such as content and speed being equal, does the hosting location affect the SEO ranking and if so, how much of an effect does it have? It's well documented that for country-specific domains the TLD is prioritized over the hosting location, but it's not clear at all what happens for international TLDs.

 

[mneylon]

I've got experience in dealing with this
One of our clients insisted on moving the hosting of a very large site to the US. They ended up bringing it back to Ireland because all things considered the benefits just weren't there.
The content indicators are more important eg. for US a US number , UK a UK number etc etc

A lot of the US hosting companies are resellers of resellers of resellers, so their connectivity isn't that amazing, which will also impact on experience and rank

 

[The Nightfly]

I understand all of that and in fact the reason I recommended the move was because of prior good experience with Blacknight and bad experience with two major US hosting companies. But it still doesn't answer the questions, which are: does hosting a .com domain in the US give it an advantage as regards Google ranking for US users, and how much weighting is given to the hosting location in comparison to the other factors Google considers?

 

[link8r]

I am working with an Irish software company whose product is aimed at a global market but primarily the US. We are revamping our website and moving from its current shared hosting in the US to a VPS hosted in Ireland. Will this have a negative impact on our Google ranking for US users, in comparison to having it physically hosted in the US? [FONT=&quot]If so, how significant a factor is the hosting location in the context of all the other factors Google takes into account? [/FONT]We have a .com domain btw.

Hi Frank - I'm with Blacknight on this first bit. Irish hosting is pretty solid, reliable and with a lot of customer focus. Some clients host in the US because of their web developer and it's just not the same. If it helps, we take clients from Irish targeting to International audiences without the need to move hosting from Ireland. In most cases, these sites either have ccTLD or a .com with the GL set but very few are country spanning.

I know we can use the Google webmaster tools to set the geographic location to the US, but will that affect our ranking in other countries such as Australia? If we set the geographic location to unlisted, will Google then rank us lower for searches in the US by virtue of us having an Irish IP address?

This is a different - and important question - to the one you raised. If you set the Geo Target to the US then you could cause yourself some issues and its going to be difficult to backtrack. Some points of logic that may help:

1. Google may continue to consider your site as US (and/or other countries) orientated regardless of the move (may)
2. When Google guesses where your site is from and you override it - it may accept it, override it or worse - show for neither
3. Google may decide to switch your site on move
4. GL setting tends to be one country

So just beware that if you set it , you may lose some, you may not, you may be able to go back, you may not. It's entirely different if your site was in Ireland, you moved to the USA and then moved back

The problem is this - if you have an old site (pre-single geo-target designation) then it may span 2 or more countries. Often you might see an Irish site rank in "pages from Ireland" and also in "Pages from the UK", most likely when they have a presence, links and traffic from both. This is generally how Google does it.

Having a site being seen as from that geo-location obviously helps as they get a priority over external ones - unless they have huge authority.

Before you move or change your target, you should really assess what you have:

For example, if you had a search phrase that was unique - e.g. Kylemore Abbey - chances of their being a local competitor in Australia, UK, USA are small to nil, therefore your site would rank even if you set the GL to Albania (within limits).

How to assess your site:

1. Test what local searches you are local to (i.e. go to google.co.uk search with pages from the UK and search for "mydomain.com" in quotation marks). If you see your domain in the organic results, you can assume you have a GL for the UK. Take the highest visitors from countries

2. Assess the geo-located links you have from each country

3. Consider developing a localised site (e.g. mysite.au or mysite.ca) or using sub-sites (mysite.com/france or mysite.com/fr/) to minimise any risks now or if Google decides to change it's GL down the line...

Hope that helps.

 

[The Nightfly]

Hi Frank - I'm with Blacknight on this first bit. Irish hosting is pretty solid, reliable and with a lot of customer focus. Some clients host in the US because of their web developer and it's just not the same.

Absolutely. That's been my experience too and it's why I recommended moving from US hosting to Irish hosting.

So just beware that if you set it , you may lose some, you may not, you may be able to go back, you may not. It's entirely different if your site was in Ireland, you moved to the USA and then moved back

Thanks for the geotargeting advice. I think it would be best to stay away from that altogether.

My gut feeling is that hosting location has little or no impact in comparison to the other factors that Google considers. For example, even though the site is currently hosted in the US (we've set up the VPS but not migrated to it yet), it comes up under "Pages from Ireland". So obviously there are other things in the mix.

Ideally I'd like to be able to tell the client that hosting in Ireland instead of the US has little or no impact on US Google ranking and any impact is more than offset by the advantages of local hosting. If I were to say that, what evidence could I produce to back it up?

Hope that helps.

It certainly does. Thanks.

Frank.

 

[link8r]

Ideally I'd like to be able to tell the client that hosting in Ireland instead of the US has little or no impact on US Google ranking and any impact is more than offset by the advantages of local hosting. If I were to say that, what evidence could I produce to back it up?
Frank.

Two things - hosting location acts as a hint. There are lots of hints. Keywords are hints - so it does impact but its more likely to be overruled by more substantial evidence, like location, GL setting, inbounds links, traffic from etc.

Hard evidence: Matt Cutts, Senior Search Quality Engineer @ Google (from the horses mouth)

YouTube - What impact does server location have on rankings?

 

[The Nightfly]

Two things - hosting location acts as a hint. There are lots of hints. Keywords are hints - so it does impact but its more likely to be overruled by more substantial evidence, like location, GL setting, inbounds links, traffic from etc.

Hard evidence: Matt Cutts, Senior Search Quality Engineer @ Google (from the horses mouth)

YouTube - What impact does server location have on rankings?

That's a very good point and in fact the current website which is a .com hosted in the US comes up under "Pages from Ireland", so obviously Google gives more weight to the content than the hosting location. Mind you, that video is evidence I could have done without, because he says at the end "we try to return the most relevant results to each user in each country, and server location in terms of IP address is a factor in that".

If you were in my position would you recommend hosting the site in the US or in Ireland?

Thanks!

Frank.

 

[HubberZero]

Yes, without a doubt. You want to host in the country your trying to get most traffic from.