first site from seven years rates higher than current site

[pcrobinson45]

Hi... this is really doing my head in ....

I have had a site on the internet for 7 years, The past four years I have been consistently in the top ten searches in Google for 'plants' . as well as other terms. My site is updated most days and the content is rich .. and all about garden plants.

http://www.plants-magazine.com/

My site has some pages in Google UK ... but the search term 'plants' doesn't bring up my site at all .. but my first EVER site from 7 years ago is ranked 18th with no keywords, titles or anything... here:

http://plants.users.netlink.co.uk//

it doesn't even mention the word 'plants'

I have asked google why the anomily ..... standard reply full of nothing anyone got a better enquiry address?) ......

How on earth can my 7 year old site that hasn't been updated once in that time and is a re-direct to another site of mine that also no longer exists ... rank more highly than http://www.plants-magazine.co.uk .. to which www.plants-magazine.com points?

Does Google Uk have a different algorythm ... or am I missing something really really easy

many thanks

[keywordguru]

I too have seen this occur in many instances. I think it has been said that google definitely gives due credit to older sites.

With one site, it holds first page for terms that pay per click bidders are spending thousands a day. I guess it is the old rule of "respecting your elders"...I doubt that:) but it definitely has some sort of play in the algo.

KG

[pcrobinson45]

from google tonight

<<<<<Please be assured that your site is not currently banned or penalized by Google.

We understand your concern; however, the situation you cite is consistent
with the normal fluctuations we mentioned in our previous email.
As we add new pages and incorporate updates to existing pages, you may see changes
in the ranking and inclusion of sites in our index. Because our index
changes regularly, it's possible your site will regain its ranking in a
few weeks.>>>>>



my reply



Dear Sir .....


I can't believe that my situation (above) with a site that has BEEN REDUNDANT for SIX years with NO MENTION of the word plants on it is ranked higher than my current site that I work extremely hard to maintain and run within normal web guidelines ..

this has been the situation for at least 6 months now and penalizes my site whatever you say.

My content is genuine .. I update daily .. how can 'updates' and 'new pages' being added to Google mean that a dead site for 6 years pointing to another site that doesn't even exist anymore (and been that way for the last 5 years) ranks above http://www.plants-magazine.co.uk

I fear you take me for a fool .......... and in the meantime a small businessman is absolutely penalized because he doesn't cheat, doesn't mask as a link farm or directory.

.. but then life ain't fair is it?

[cspelts]

Can you get access to the old site? You could leave the content exactly as is, because it's obviously working - and add a big link to your current site at the very top. Tell customers, hey this site is old, visit us at our new site!

Rather than trying to appeal to Google, it seems maybe a better use of your time would be to appeal to whoever controls your old site and get that change made.

[AndrewX]

cspelt's advice is what I would do.

Go with the Google flow!

Plus that link, if not already there, could actually help the other site's ranking...

[cbp]

http://www.plants-magazine.co.uk appears to be hosted in Canada. Googles gives most emphasis to physical location of host server when returning results from a region.

http://plants.users.netlink.co.uk is hosted in the UK. The site is PR3, so has links pointing to it, presumably with 'plants' as the anchor text of those links and the word is mentioned on the page, hence its not a problem to rank for that term.

I can't seem to access the http://www.plants-magazine.com as it times out - sorry, can't check any further. However it is hosted in Germany, so given its a .com name hosted in Germany, Google has no way to know its from the UK (BTW - you rank number one in www.google.de for plants magazine when searching for sites only from Germany)

CBP

[pcrobinson45]

Sorry guys .... my site does appear to be 'down' ... just my luck, as soon as I manage to get some time to try and resolve this probelm .. my site is not available ....


I use a local hosing firm to the north east of the UK .......... so when you say: <http://www.plants-magazine.co.uk appears to be hosted in Canada. Google gives most emphasis to physical location of host server when returning results from a region.
http://plants.users.netlink.co.uk is hosted in the UK. The site is PR3, so has links pointing to it, presumably with 'plants' as the anchor text of those links and the word is mentioned on the page, hence its not a problem to rank for that term.
I can't seem to access the http://www.plants-magazine.com as it times out - sorry, can't check any further. However it is hosted in Germany, so given its a .com name hosted in Germany>


I was told they host on their own server ..... how can I check where my two sites are hosted please? ( .com points to .co.uk so I am told....) .... as I would prefer that my uk site was hosted in the UK if that is what is best .....

I have no access to the netlink site from 7 years ago at all.

Many thanks to you all for your feedback and expertise up until now

[cbp]

I was told they host on their own server

I would get back to them on that. The IP address is German....how do you think you show up in 'pages from germany' on google.de?

A number of UK hosts have servers based in Europe (its cheaper).

You realy need to get moved to a UK based server with a UK IP address.

CBP

[pcrobinson45]

.. and the .com site is based in Canada?

wow .. it may well be (with my limited knowledge) that if the .co.uk site is on a german server that it does the rankings in google.co.uk no good at all

I checked with google.de and it resolves the plants.com site rather than the plants-magazine.co.uk site ... does that still mean that .com site (which I was always told points to the .co.uk site) is actually hosted in a different continent altogether .... ?

[cbp]

actually hosted in a different continent altogether .... ?

Looks that way.
Think you need a frank discussion with your host.

What you need is one domain (pref .uk, if thats your target market) hosted on a server physically based in the UK. Any other domains you have, all should be set up with a 301 redirect to that one preferred domain (sometimes when a host says 'points at', they don't mean a 301 - if the URL in the address bar does not change to the site its redirected to, then you run the risk of a duplicate content penalty.

CBP

[PikoTech]

I've actually endured the very same problem myself for a long time now.

Our servers are hosted in the US, therefore we do show up pretty well on "US based" searches (probably a bad way to put it).

But on UK searches, we aren't as good as what we might be. I have actually suggested (to both Google and MSN) that sites could maybe use some new form of META tag to tell Search Engines (hey maybe even in robots.txt) where the website is aimed at.

On the same subject, could anyone in the UK suggest a relatively good-value source of UK based IP addresses so I could point these to my servers?

[pcrobinson45]

.. thanks everyone ....

I just used visualware trace route online and it resolves both the .com and the .co.uk to servers based in Germany

My magazine appeals worldwide .. and most of my subscribers come from the US , so a high rating in google.com comes from that appeal, but also as my site has been established online for almost 7 years and had many inbound links from sites of a similar content.

It doesn't see to hurt the rankings returning US customers from a site based in Germany .. but my guess is now after reading the posts and checking out other sites that having the .co.uk based in Germany most certainly hurts the returns from the Google .co.uk site.

The content is the same .... I have always owned the two URL's and have always pointed one at the other.

I upgraded the site extensively and went onto the web developers own servers during the upgrade .. that's when I started to drop out of the Google.co.uk search resuults .. obviously I was hosted in the Uk before .. and didn't realise that they had their in Germany. In fact they told me their servers were in London ...

Maybe I should host the site in the UK? Or better maybe in the US and have the uk address point elsewhere ....... I wish I was more knowledgeable!

[freddieb]

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I understand that it doesn't matter where a site is hosted which Google it appears on, but it's governed by the domain extension. So if a domain name is blah.co.uk it will appear on google.co.uk with a search for "pages from UK", but doing a "search The Web" it lists mainly TLD sites.

This is why I prefer TLDs to specific country domains, it seems that you'll get listed in both searches with a TLD and putting the country of origin in the page Titles, Descriptions and in the text content.

What have others found in this regard?

[cbp]

Google places most of the weight on the physical location of the server and not on the TLD. Yahoo put more weight on the TLD.

The site we are dscussing here shows in pages from germany on google.de and not in pages from uk on google.co.uk - show why phsical loation of server very important (its not the only factor, but is teh most important for Google)

CBP

[stevealmond]

Hi pcrobinson45,

I am located in Spain, with a Spanish ISP, and therefore I have a Spanish IP address. I have the google toolbar installed, which I believe uses google.com results, i.e world results. I have just done a search on plants and your new site (plants-magazine)is showing at number six, whereas your old site (plants.users.netlink) is nowhere. I then did a search by logging on to google.co.uk which, even though I am based in Spain, should show UK results. Lo and behold your new site on a serch for plants is number six and your old site is nowhere. I am not quite sure which google results you are receiving, but they certainly aint what I get!

Regards

Steve

[pcrobinson45]

Thank you for your reply.

We understand your concern.

We are constantly
working to improve the quality of our search results and it is likely that
a non-spam site will resume its previous position during the next crawl.

We realize that this may be frustrating, and we're sorry that we cannot be
of further assistance on this matter.

Regards,
The Google Team

[stevealmond]

Hi pcrobinson45,

I'm not really sure why you are giving google so much stick on this one. I've just had a quick look at all google datacentres using the google datacentre watch tool (http://www.mcdar.net/dance/topframe.php?query=). This tool shows that a search on plants gives your new site (plants-magazine) a position of either 6 or 7 across all datacentres. Google is returning 51,500,000 results for the search term plants, you are in the top ten on all datacentres what more do you want?

Regards

Steve

[cspelts]

you are in the top ten on all datacentres what more do you want?

Besides, you won't change Google - the only thing you can change is what you put out there for Google to index!

[espectations]

I have a similar problem - my host is in South Africa and the site appears to be fine here, however some of the International companies that I exchanged links with told me that my site is "down" - I also have a monitoring service on the site and did not get any alerts.

On previous occassions I got alerts, checked with the ISP and they just told me nothing is wrong.

I think there is some issue here and think it would be best to move all my sites offshore as my target market is the US and Europe.

I cannot afford to put into the sites what I do just to find that my target market cannot see the site....

I also noted before that older sites get preference - fortunately my businesses are pretty stable and my sites have been on the net a long time.

I launched a new division recently and am struggling to get the site positioned - something is going on at Google - it looks as if they are not crawling new sites or something....

[andromeda]

Does this mean that it would be beneficial for us to host our sites only in countries that we're targetting? Ie, if I'm targeting US consumers, I should host in the US and not UK or other country?

[cbp]

Welcome to WPW

There is no regional US search. You can rank OK in google.com hosted from anywhere. It is only advantagous if you want to be sure to be included in results from the region when people search for <sites from "region"> when they seach using a regional google (eg google.co.uk)

CBP

[freddieb]

Originally Posted by cbp

Google places most of the weight on the physical location of the server and not on the TLD. Yahoo put more weight on the TLD.

The site we are dscussing here shows in pages from germany on google.de and not in pages from uk on google.co.uk - show why phsical loation of server very important (its not the only factor, but is teh most important for Google)

CBP

I have sites hosted on servers in India and USA. There are no problems with Google placements for sites that have a .com.au extension in either country so I can't see that the physical location of a site is an issue. I don't have any sites with a .com.au extension hosted in Australia but they all come up equally well in Yahoo or Google.

[cbp]

So why is the site above having problems showing up regionally?

I assume search engines use a weighted algorithm to determine if a result shpould show up in a regiopn.

As I said above, Google uses several things to determine location. The physical location of the server is the main criteria used by Google - it is not the only criteria. A TLD is enough sometimes - the only way to guarantee it is by the physical location of the server. In Yahoo!, more weight is given to the TLD than physical location.

Here is a draft of article that i am writing on this:

Most search engines have regional or country versions. For example, Google has many (eg google.co.uk, google.ca, google.com.au, etc) . If a searcher chooses the [search from country] option, the search engine has to apply a filter to decide which sites are from that region or country to rank them. There are number of possible ways that they could do this:

(1)The physical location of the server (eg Australia; Canada).
(2)The domain extension (eg .au; .ca).
(3)The site is optimized for the country (eg high keyword density of the word 'Australia' relative to other words).
(4)The contact details for the site on the site or in the Whois data are for the country (eg the address is in Australia).
(5)The site is listed in a regional category of DMOZ or Yahoo!.

Most of the decision making is given to (1) and (2) and it is not known how much, if any, search engines actually gives weight to (3), (4) or (5).

CBP

[magnolia1]

Originally Posted by cbp

Google places most of the weight on the physical location of the server and not on the TLD. Yahoo put more weight on the TLD.

I have actually found the opposite.

If you do a search for "dover ferry" in the UK results of yahoo.co.uk, the site that ranks top has a .to (Tonga) TLD but is hosted in the UK.

If you do the same search in Google.co.uk for the whole web, the same site ranks second, but if you then filter for the UK, it dissapears.

This shows that in this particular instance Google is determining the region by the TLD, and Yahoo is using the server location.

However a letter from Google regarding this said:

"Thank you for your note. We understand that your site is not appearing as a search result for 'pages from the UK.' While all sites in our index return for searches restricted to 'the web,' only sites hosted in each country will display as search results for pages from that country. If you would like your site to be returned in this country-restricted search, we recommend that you have your site hosted in the UK

If your site is currently hosted in the UK and you feel that Google is incorrectly detecting its location, please visit http://services.google.com/georeport/ to report the error. In the 'Comments' section of the form, please include your IP address and your site's physical location."