Does IP Location of backlinks effect Results?

[scanmonkey]

Does IP Location of backlinks effect Results?

I am suprised to discover that I have a lot of first page results in http://www.google.co.in (useless to me) and I can't be found as easily on Google.com for competitive keywords.

I have a good number of backlinks from Indian sites and this leads me to ask the question: "Does the IP location of backlinks effect the search results?"

I would welcome any thoughts, or comments. If you don't agree, feel free to monkey slap me.

[Novice Investing]

Sorry. I'm a newbie. How did the search engine know the IP location of a web address? If a .in domain is hosted in the UK, does that constitute as a UK IP location or....?

[scanmonkey]

Originally Posted by Novice Investing

Sorry. I'm a newbie. How did the search engine know the IP location of a web address? If a .in domain is hosted in the UK, does that constitute as a UK IP location or....?

You can do a whois record search to find the IP location. http://whois.domaintools.com/

The country domain extenstion is another factor that the algo could take into consideration when weighing backlinks.

[SemAdvance]

Yes the region / location of where a majority of the links originate, could bolster the results on Googles localized version of their search engines.

Add to this english words would be less competitive than the native language and you can see how you rank well on the foreign google engine for your term as compared to the google.com

And as you said no matter what it is a useless ranking to you.

Hope it helps

Clint

[wige]

As a guess, I think the domain name would probably be more important than the location of the IP address. As pricing and services for foriegn hosting companies becomes more competitive, businesses are starting to host with servers that are not in their own country, making the host IP address location meaningless (after all, how many small businesses host their own web servers in their home towns?). I would be very suprised if Google considered the physical location of the server. I would not be suprised at all if they did take into account the top-level domain, and possibly even the language of the linking page.

I just had a terrifying thought though... I keep getting ads from SEO companies promising top ten ranking in Google for the keywords of my choice... I notice they don't specify Google.com...

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by SemAdvance

Yes the region / location of where a majority of the links originate, could bolster the results on Googles localized version of their search engines.

I agree Clint. Actually this is a large factor determining rank on regionalized Google's. Just another part of the overall formula as to why a UK website ranks well in the UK search engines and not the American search engines.

[SemAdvance]

Hi Jaan

Well we see things in the same way on a great many issues surrounding SEO and the more inane workings of Google.

I have also found, and feel this could help a lot of others, is there are very solid feelings about the TLD of a domain.

If you are in the UK and selling products that only are delivered in the UK then your website may do better in converting to sales if you use the .co.uk TLD as opposed to .com

I am also wondering if others see this same thing in their countries??

Peace

[scanmonkey]

Originally Posted by SemAdvance

Yes the region / location of where a majority of the links originate, could bolster the results on Googles localized version of their search engines.

This seems to be the case. I am seeing juiced rankings in http://www.google.co.in. Approx 2% improvement in http://www.google.co.uk and http://www.google.com.au/

Originally Posted by SemAdvance

Add to this english words would be less competitive than the native language and you can see how you rank well on the foreign google engine for your term as compared to the google.com

The language doesn't seem to help. For search terms that we are ranking first page, we are on the 5th page for http://www.google.de and buried in http://www.google.com.br and http://www.google.fr/

Originally Posted by SemAdvance

And as you said no matter what it is a useless ranking to you.

India is probably the worst place to have juiced results. The mailbox is full from people looking for work or trying to sell us something.

[wmrobwl]

Originally Posted by scanmonkey

Does IP Location of backlinks effect Results?

I am suprised to discover that I have a lot of first page results in http://www.google.co.in (useless to me) and I can't be found as easily on Google.com for competitive keywords.

I have a good number of backlinks from Indian sites and this leads me to ask the question: "Does the IP location of backlinks effect the search results?"

I would welcome any thoughts, or comments. If you don't agree, feel free to monkey slap me.

It seems that no one has directly answered this question for you, so I'll take a stab at it.

1. It is known that Google knows what your web site's IP address is. They use this info to discount links that come from the same server. i.e.: if you have 1000 domain names hosted on the same server and you set up links to one domain name to try to boost its ranking, google will discount those links

2. It is also known that Google uses domain name ext's to determine geopgraphic relevancy (as incrediblehelp has touched upon.

So, we can safely assume that it is possible that Google can discriminate your links based on IP location. The only thing we cant speculate on without more evidence is which carries more weight the IP or the domain? In other words, if the IP is in the US, but the domain ext is India, does google consider the site a US site or an Indian site?

[scanmonkey]

Wmrobwl, the domain ext isn't a factor in this case. My domain is located in the U.S. and is .com and I don't link to many Indian tlds.

[Chatmaster]

I am tempted to ask where your site is hosted... apart from the domain extention, this is the most important reason for you to rank well for India. But I guess you know that. The next step will most definately be backlinks from sites hosted in the country and related domain extentions.

[SemAdvance]

TLD matters over IP

Do a search on the different Google search engines for the same keyword term.

"motor" for example on google.com returns all .com TLDs

On Google.co.uk most results up top are .co.uk first and then others near the bottom such as .com .org

Google.ie pushes .ie sites first then .coms

Google.de pushes .de sites first and most of the sites in the top 10 are .de

Google.se brings up mostly all .se websites

I imagine this trend would continue for most of Googles country engines.... if there are enough local sites about the subject they will come up first before another countries offering.

Hope this helps

[Chatmaster]

I don't think it is really a case of TLD is more important than hosting IP. But these 2 factors are without a doubt key factors in local rank. However the backlink's TLD's and hosting servers are of key importance if we are talking about google.co.in where 'india only' results were not selected. Although the IP address and and TLD has an increased weight it is still the linking that plays the key role in the SERPS.

[scanmonkey]

Originally Posted by Chatmaster

I am tempted to ask where your site is hosted... apart from the domain extention, this is the most important reason for you to rank well for India. But I guess you know that. The next step will most definately be backlinks from sites hosted in the country and related domain extentions.

Chatmaster, my site is hosted in TEXAS. I discovered that I was getting a lot of hits from India when I was reviewing my log files and was suprised to discover that I had juiced results for google india. I figure the reason for this is that I have quite a few one-way links from Indian SEO companies.

[SemAdvance]

Originally Posted by SemAdvance

I imagine this trend would continue for most of Googles country engines.... if there are enough local sites about the subject they will come up first before another countries offering.

As I said the locals come first then due to your one way links your site would be one of the ones to come up if there are not enough localized set of results.

Add on top of this a concerted SEO effort and it makes the scenario all the more apt to occur.

That, and I love quoting myself ;->

Peace

[Chatmaster]

Originally Posted by scanmonkey

I figure the reason for this is that I have quite a few one-way links from Indian SEO companies.

That is very interesting as I have seen very few cases where backlinks had this effect. Nice to hear of an actual confirmation of this as I am stuck with a site that are based in a country called Swaziland (.co.sz tld) which is smack bam in the middle of South Africa (our target market). Google seems to think it is based somewhere in the world but not in South Africa, lol

Obtaining South African backlinks to the site unfortunately are allot more difficult than I hoped and I am not ranking anywhere in the local results. Due to legal implications I am not allowed to host the site in South Africa or make use of the SA tld.

[SemAdvance]

Originally Posted by Chatmaster

That is very interesting as I have seen very few cases where backlinks had this effect. Nice to hear of an actual confirmation of this as I am stuck with a site that are based in a country called Swaziland (.co.sz tld) which is smack bam in the middle of South Africa (our target market). Google seems to think it is based somewhere in the world but not in South Africa, lol

Obtaining South African backlinks to the site unfortunately are allot more difficult than I hoped and I am not ranking anywhere in the local results. Due to legal implications I am not allowed to host the site in South Africa or make use of the SA tld.

Now if links were the only issue you might be on track. However the algorithim is over 100 parts so to say you know definitely is a reach.

[Chatmaster]

Originally Posted by SemAdvance

Now if links were the only issue you might be on track. However the algorithim is over 100 parts so to say you know definitely is a reach.

Make that your assumption,... I have run a couple of tests to confirm this I also believe if you cruise the SEO community you will note several others have confirm this aswell. Hopefully soon I will have this site of mine in there aswell. :)

[SemAdvance]

Hi Chatmaster,

I make no assumptions.

I do know what I speak of I ranked enough sites over the years and with terms ranked over 2.5 years continually on Googles front page.

And I wanted to introduce myself as well, since I now have a foot hold in the same area that you are working in. My sixth continent ;->

Nice to meet you.....see you in the SERPs

[Chatmaster]

Yah I guess nothing like a good debate to get facts separated from the assumption, lol

I am competing in different markets and this is the first time I actually have to get an international site rank competitively for a specific country. The irony is that this site is ranking extremely well on Google.com but the traffic doesn't help me one bit as we actually need traffic from South Africa, so we are actually wasting allot of bandwidth on meaningless traffic, sigh...

Anyway I have analyzed several country specific results as I have several sites hosted in the UK ranking top10 there some with UK tld's some not... I also have a few SA hosted sites that are ranking extremely well locally but getting an international site to rank well for it's targeted SA visitors has proven Googles most difficult part of it's algo... I have seen a couple of sites ranking well in the UK and SA Google's rank well with .com tld's US hosting. After analyzing their backlinks I noticed that they have a large amount of Country specific backlinks, so I am pretty sure that it plays a role...

The irony is that if Google added advertising backlinks to their country specific SERP's they would without a doubt rank us well, as we have one of the biggest brands in the country.