13 replies to this topic

[bumble]

I wonder if anyone here can help?

I know your going to laugh at me but a few months back I moved my uk based .com website from a host in the uk to a host in the US because it was cheaper. DOH! I didn't realise until afterwards that Google and other search engines look at the IP address of the domain to work out the geographical location of that website. Now I am listed in the .com listings for Google and not .co.uk. Quickly after realising my error a couple of months ago, I moved the website to a London based host but Google hasn't moved my website to the .co.uk listings yet. Yahoo and all the other search engines have moved me back. Am I just being impatient or should Google have moved me back now? I have tried emailing webmaster@google.com a couple of times but to no avail.

Any ideas would be very much appreciated.

Kind Regards

Lee

[McFox]

Buy the .co.uk domain name and republish the site on .co.uk

McF

[reddevil]

that's funny.
my site is also hosted in the usa and is number 28 in google uk, but is nowhere to be found in google.com!!

[bumble]

Thanks McF

Surely there must be an alternative to starting all over again? If Google had me in it's UK listing once before, surely I can get it back in there? There are plenty of other .com websites listed in the UK listings.

[OldWelshGuy]

Put your address at the foot of every page, include town, county, country, postcode, UK, and get links from UK only directories . This might help, but as McF said, the ONLY real way to be certain is to have a UK only address.

Our web design site is a .com and was excluded from UK only searches. I posted in another topic that both G & Y! seem to have a better understanding of where sites physically are based (not physically hosted, thats a different ballgame) Have you checked that in so far as the web is concerned you are actually classed as being UK? Your site could be hosted on a server in Canary wharf, but if the company hosting it have an American IP block (as most cheap hosts do) then your a Murcan as far as the SE's are concerned.

OWG

[glengara]

OWG, my Irish host got some Dutch Ips which were then re-registered as Irish, are those UK hosts just not bothering to do that?

Here's a handy tool that gives the location identification of your IP ....
http://www.digitalpo...ebsite-country/

[bumble]

Thanks OWG

So are you saying that my website might still have a US IP address even though it's located in the UK? How can I find out if I have a US IP address? Anyone know if there's a website or something that I can enter my IP address into to find out?

Thanks

[bumble]

Thanks Glengara

Just ran that tool and it tells me that my website is in the states

Will I have to find yet another hosting company now? I specifically mention to my hosting company that I wanted to appear in the UK listings and they said I definately would. Well obvioulsy not. Now I am really angry but im glad I talked to you guys because I woud have just carried on waiting and waiting.

[OldWelshGuy]

Hi Bumble, yep you are up the creek on this one where Google UK search is concerned sorry.

Most hosting companies don't realise the position, they are not being deceptive, they are just ignorant of the fact, that 'physically hosted' does not (contraray to common logic) mean where the server is geographically.

[madams]

OWG

Hi my name´s Madams (not my real name of course, no mother would call a child that. No my real name is Pork Chop Chips and Pees)

I was interested with the thread on US hoasting.

I have a .com address that is hoasted in th US.

Will I suffer if searchers click UK sites only?

If so, I have also the .co.uk for my website, can I use this in any way that will help.

Thank you for your time.

[sunseaker]

Well, my .com site is hosted in the Netherlands with Netherlands IP. Does that mean I will never get included in the Google.co.uk results? I also own the .co.uk currently pointing to the .com domain. will submitting the .co.uk to google.co.uk help me?

Sunseaker

[OldWelshGuy]

Here is a link to where we discussed this previously http://www.highranki...=2613&hl=domain

another:-
http://www.highranki...topic=1636&st=0

In reality the ONLY surefire way to be included in a UK only search is to have the site hosted on a UK domain. It is no use forwarding a .uk domain to a .com, as the spiders ignore the forwarding, they only log the final destination.

[anthonyparsons.com]

Madams,

What's the point otherwise of having regional searches? If you want to appear in them, have the regional domain. A .com domain means commercial and is more construed to global nowadays. I don't think you would suffer to much in the US for .com, but other countries, YES.

Even now with .us domains, go regional if it applies, that being the concept and how the engines speculate the theory.

[flipper]

I just recently upgraded our mysite.com hosting account to a larger unix based account for more bandwidth and disk space. I naturally assumed the server was physically located in the UK as the company advertised the fact that they have UK based servers and my old mysite.com account WAS actually hosted in the UK.

I was about to streamline my hosting accounts into one site and point our mysite.co.uk - which IS physically sited in the UK via a 301 redirect to our mysite.com - but after using the digital point tool which states that our mysite .com is actually in the USA, should I just leave them alone as seperate domains and maybe tweak the .co.uk site more for localised UK visitors?

Just shows - you need to ASK about these things before you actually go ahead and sign up for hosting packages, even if your present host had you on their old UK servers, if you upgrade for more bandwidth or space they may just upload the site in another country - probably to save money.