US Hosting

[dogma I]

Will hosting and registering .com domains on hostgator USA servers detriment search engine rankings too much?

The majority of the target market will be the UK.

Thanks for your help.

 

[monaghan]

The generally accepted rule for SEO purposes is that to get into a local search, you either need to be hosted on an IP address allocated to the country you are targetting or you need to be on a TLD associated with that country.

Therefore to get a good ranking for a .com in the UK, your best bet is to host in the UK, however if you have a .co.uk, then you should be OK hosting it outside the UK (however in my own experience, I've found better ranking for a .org.uk site I manage for a local charity since moving it to a UK server)

 

[accelerator]

Yep, if targetting UK then best to host on a UK server.

 

[dogma I]

thanks for your replies. I will look at UK server hosting then.

 

[monaghan]

Remember that UK hosting will generally be a bit more than US hosting as we have to pay more than the US guys for our servers, electricity and bandwidth.

Also, you need to check where the servers are located, a lot of UK Companies offer cheap hosting by using non UK servers. We have option of UK or US, so make sure you read the details otherwise you could end up paying UK price, but getting non UK hosting

 

[FinitaryEvent]

There are hosting companies with datacenters both in UK and USA, say oneandone.com and marblehost.com.

 

[monaghan]

I'd suggest checking 1&1 as they always used to be hosted in Germany.

 

[mat]

I have a website that rocketed up the google rankings after changing from a US/Canadian server to UK

The domain name was also a .com so as people have said above was another factor to it not ranking as well as it could.

 

[FinitaryEvent]

I'd suggest checking 1&1 as they always used to be hosted in Germany.

What do you mean by that, I thought they are a USA-based company?

 

[mat]

They are German and UK based

 

[devolution]

For the Lord's sake, DO NOT GET ANYTHING INCLUDING HOSTING FROM 1&1...

Why some people are still recommending it is beyond me...

 

[butuzik]

What about Marblehost.com? Their WhoIs records say they use LiquidNet datacenter, I think it's UK-based?
Compare their pricing for USA and UK hosting, it seems to be equal, how can they manage it?