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[orix]

Hi,

our website is hosted in the US but we're located in other country. Searching for something in google our site doesn't get listed when we choose the "only web pages from «our country»" option.

how can i tell google that a ".com" website IS from a certain country in spite of being hosted else where?

thanks

[brian.mark]

Unfortunately, they do a lot of that filtering by IP address of the server. It'll be tough with hosting in the US.

Brian.

[orix]

tks for your reply.

will it help: add a park domain, with a top level domain associated to that country, pointing to the existing one?

[brian.mark]

My feeling on that is no. IP is what makes the primary decision for country of origin. Domain is much lower, and page content (if you have your address on every page) is around the same as domain.

If you really want to rank within a country, hosting it there is the best way to go about it.

Brian.

[orix]

last question... really!

If you really want to rank within a country, hosting it there is the best way to go about it.

how do you explain that a site hosted in the US, with that country TLD gets listed in google with "only web pages from «country»" option checked?

i notice this, because we have another site, hosted in the same place (US) but with a different TLD, corresponding to the company location. and this one gets listed.

[cbp]

There are always exceptions to the "rules" when it comes to this topic. The location of the server is the key to show up, however sometimes the top level domain does help, but don't count on it.

CBP

[ADAM Web Design]

I've never bought into the IP theory, simply because geotargeting of an IP is an inexact science.

For example, try taking the following IP:

64.226.3.98

And putting it into any or all of the following:

http://www.hostip.info/index.html
http://www.geobytes.com/ipLocator.html

Any other IP-to-geographic-location service.

A lot of them can't even resolve the IP to an area, and the ones that can (e.g. hostip.info) resolve it to Waterloo, Indiana.

At least they had the country right.

It's Interland.com's IP, and Interland is based out of Atlanta, Jaw-ja.

Also, consider that most (if not all) AOL IPs are tracked to Dulles, Virginia (i.e. the AOL headquarters). Granted, AOL doesn't do commercial hosting, but I'm just using it to show how IPs aren't always accurately geographically portrayed (something to consider when looking at geogrpahic stats).

Indiana to Jaw-ja is a pretty healthy gap, and if that goes on for Interland, it's likely to happen again for other IPs. And if I'm Google and I'm aware of this (as I'm sure they are). I'm using this with a grain of salt at best.

The "IP is a factor" logic doesn't take into account the "basement hoster." All other things remaining equal, a basement hoster would gain an advantage over someone who hosts their site on a more reliable connection and server outside of their own country. That doesn't jive at all.

To me, the bigger factor would be the regional TLD than the IP address, if Google and other SEs even use it (and I'm inclined to think they don't, or very marginally at best.)

[orix]

thanks for your replies! :)