How would Google Determine country of a website ?

John-pr · #1 (**permalink**) 10-30-2006, 12:33 AM

Hi Everyone.

I am bit confused regarding the country of a website.

Do they see the Whois information for this ?
Or
They use the place where the site is hosted ? (This shouldnt be the case as many websites are hosted on US servers)

**incrediblehelp** · #2 (**permalink**) 11-01-2006, 11:10 PM

Yes you should be able to lok at the whois and tell by the IP of the website.

janeth · #3 (**permalink**) 11-02-2006, 09:39 AM

They use three things.

1. Where the site is hosted

2. Where the links are coming from

3. The domain name

Duncan Pollock · #4 (**permalink**) 11-02-2006, 11:54 PM

There's maybe a related question: what difference does it make?
And it DOES seem to do so, as several previous threads from Canadian, Australian, UK, and other non-US located website owners have raised.
Moreover, unless I miss my guess, Google doesn't appear to have either a policy or a consistency in place regarding sites that are geographically located outside the US, regardless of their WHOIS registration, hosting locale, or even domain name and/or extension (e.g. .ca / .uk &c).
I'm one such puzzled site owner and see myself with entirely satisying results in Google web searches but only occasional appearances in pages from Canada. Moreover, I've yet to confirm any posts that suggest that my Canadian street address makes a scrap of difference. The very most I've been able to achieve is a listing in Google's Local pages, but this is absolutely town (i.e. Niagara-on-the-Lake) specific and seems not to be attainable in nearby locales such as St. Catharines and Niagara Falls because they're in other parts of the map.

Duncan

janeth · #5 (**permalink**) 11-03-2006, 12:02 AM

Your street address does not matter but where the site is hosted, domain name and incoming links do make a difference.

The reason it matters to some people is because some websites are specific to a location. So ranking world wide is not a desire and local rank can be achieved faster and with less effort.

Duncan Pollock · #6 (**permalink**) 11-03-2006, 12:34 AM

Sorry janeth, but we need to agree to disagree.
Sure, my street address isn't particularly important, but my Canadian locale, Canadian WHOIS registration, and Canadian hosting do NOT get me into pages from Canada. In contrast, some of my competitors (i.e. fellow agents who are members of the same Real Estate Board as I am) do turn up in pages from Canada but rarely if ever appear in web searches -- and I know that some of them use US hosts rather than Canadian ones.
Fortunately, I'm not unduly concerned, nor, I suspect are, my competitors. The nature of my business is to attract people (i.e. buyers) from outside my locale who have a possible interest in moving into it, whereas my colleageus are more focused on connecting with people (i.e. sellers) who are already living here (and could be interested in arranging a listing).
It just doesn't seem possible -- does it? -- that Google is somehow able to realize that there are two different types of visitors (buyers and sellers) to Niagara Region real estate websites and accordingly decides to give me preference in web searches and my competitors pages from Canada searches.
Otherwise, I'll still argue that the policy and consistency just aren't there!

Duncan

PS. Some little time ago I waxed lyrical because there suddenly seemed to be similar results for real estate niagara in both web and pages from Canada SERPS. However, this was short lived and I was clearly counting my algo tweak chickens before they hatched. Within weeks, the situation went back to where it had always been -- and still is.

janeth · #7 (**permalink**) 11-03-2006, 07:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duncan Pollock

Sorry janeth, but we need to agree to disagree.

We can do that. (:

We did a lot of testing on this and moved sites from the UK to the US and back again.

We found that sites that had both hosting and links from an area did better in that area.

If your only hosting a site in an area it want make a difference, you need links from sites that are already ranking in that area.

We did on going testing with this for over a year.

Duncan Pollock · #8 (**permalink**) 11-03-2006, 02:29 PM

janeth: Of course we can (i.e. agree to disagree). Otherwise, what are friends for?
And I'm sure you're right in your findings in moving things from the UK to the US.
But I'm still puzzled -- though not frustrated -- by the difference in web and pages from Canada SERPs. Thus, I don't feel that we can take anything as gospel. We simply need to hear/learn from Google how/why they handle non-US sites -- except that I very much doubt they'll ever tell us!
Meanwhile, I think we can only make blind guesses and hope for the best with any relocated hosting, WHOIS registration, domain name, whatever. In other words, it's all a puzzlement and we just have to settle for whatever small mercies are granted to us by the Google gods.

Duncan