Google UK

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Does anyone know what http://www.google.co.uk/ uses to determine if a site's pages classify as "pages from the UK"? Is it based on the host, the domain name, special tags in the pages, etc.?

[Mike43]

Hi David,

I believe that Google UK checks (somehow) that the site is hosted at a UK hosted company. We switched to a company over in the UK, though we haven't had much luck thus far breaking into Google.co.uk results thus far. (though we did also switch from Miva 4 to Miva 5 as well as changing hosts and having a similar site in US) so there are a lot of variables for us.

As it was told to me, if you are starting from scratch, host in the UK as Google is no doubt going to get better at deteremining where the site is hosted. Also, the domain definitely should be co.uk rather than .com as I believe that's one of the first ways that Google filters out non UK sites.

Hope that helps,

Mike

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Oh, in this case it is a .com domain. You'd think that Google would be smarter than to consider a site not in the UK just because the hosting is not since some hosting companies have actual facilities on both continents and many sites from one country are hosted in other countries.

[Mike43]

It's not to say that a .com won't get indexed, just if you have someone who is trying to find something at google.co.uk and clicks the radio button for "Pages from the UK", they are going to get co.uk listings more often than not in the top 10. IF they do not check that option, a .com is fine.

I'd caution against making a new co.uk domain and re-creating the existing site, as Google might punish your US site for duplicate content. (Seems like that's what happened to us a little while back).

The domain issue is by far more of a major issue than the hosting, imho.