Where Your Site Is Hosted

October 2, 2007

Hi Jill

I wonder if you can help me.  We have a website in New Zealand and it is
hosted here too.  We are expanding our business to Australia and building a
new website for this.  My web company has said that the new site should be
hosted in Australia as we would get a good start with Google.com.au.   Do
you agree with this? Does Google take into account where your site is hosted
for rankings?

Thanks
Sandra

++Jill's Response++

Hi Sandra,
 
According to the smart folks in my forum who work with a lot of
international sites, yes, it would be smart to host the site in Australia
(and also give it a .com.au TLD).  Here's our very detailed forum thread on
that topic.
 
Hope this helps!
 
Jill

P.S. I'm actually going to be in New Zealand in February '08 for the
Webstock New Zealand conference.  If anyone
is in that area (I'll be in Wellington), please let me know and we can try
to schedule a sort of impromptu meet-up!  Also, if you have any advice on
what to do and see when I'm not at the conference, please let me know.    I
was trying to talk my husband and son into coming out for part of the time,
but that may not happen, so I might be on my own.