Pros and Cons of hosting in the US...

Just read Lee's post about the cracking deals you can get if you are prepared to host your website on US servers...

Prompted the thought:

What are the pros and cons of hosting in the US versus either the UK or Europe?

This is probably a question people either get confused about, or simply don't think about, and the impact presumably it can have with the search engines?

Carl

Re : Pros and Cons of hosting in the US

This is quite a big question!

However the simplest answer is that most people say that if you want to get best results on searches through the .com version of the search engines, then it is best to have a US hosted site and/or a domain name ending in .com

If you want to get good placement on UK specific searches then go for UK hosting and a domain that ends in .co.uk

Be interested to hear other people's thoughts on this though?

Dan
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Web Design

Re : Pros and Cons of hosting in the US

Dan,

Do you know if search engines like google use geolocation techniques to find out where a web site is based? Our main web site is a .com but is hosted by 1and1 who are in Germany. Are you saying that if I swap to a US hosting company I might get better rankings in google, etc?

Thanks,

Lee.
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BackupsAnywhere Ltd Secure offsite backup

Re : Pros and Cons of hosting in the US

Hi Lee

I don't know for sure (nice disclaimer there ;-) however I've seen quite a few references on several sites and different resources suggesting that may be the case.

Dan
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Web Design

Re : Pros and Cons of hosting in the US

Interesting stuff.

Is this something that all search engines take into account?

Carl

Re : Pros and Cons of hosting in the US

For country specific searches it is best to have the site hosted in the country that you wish to appear high in the rankings of. The top level of the domain will also have an impact but most agree that the host is of greater importance.

Google is the biggest advocate of this but both yahoo and microsoft also use it as a ranking factor to a lesser degree.

Re : Pros and Cons of hosting in the US

Remember that getting a host that is based in a country is not a guarantee that their servers are actually based there! Therefore when considering a new host always ask what the IP addresses of their servers are and therefore where your site will appear to be based.

For instance many UK companies actually have their servers based in Germany or somewhere else in Europe.

Hope this helps

Tim