Site Ranks Lower Locally Than Worldwide, Very ood, UK site is lower in UK than worldwide Options

[Txtlocal]

Hi all,

I run [Link removed, see Forum Rules.] - a UK based website with UK IP address using a .com TLD (we do have international customers too, so don't use .co.uk as our main TLD).

One of our main keywords is [removed for your own good]. Can anyone explain why we rank on page 2 of Google.com and Google.com.au for this term, but only page 9 on Google.co.uk?

Google knows we are a UK site because we ARE listed in a Google.co.uk "Pages from the UK" search..... so why oh why do we rank so lowly in the UK, yet so high worldwide?

Many many thanks to anyone who can come to my rescue on this. It's been driving me crazy for months now (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif)

Thanks, Alastair


This post has been edited by Randy: Aug 11 2007, 06:10 AM

Reason for edit: Removed link, keyword and text formatting.

[Randy]

While it's not typically what you see --because competition Worldwide is usually more stout than on a local level-- what you describe is not unheard of either.

As you've noticed, the regional/country search runs off of its own database, and sometimes has its own algorithm that may be close to but is not exactly the same as the .com version uses. So there could be any number of reasons for what you're seeing. Hard to say without doing a complete site review, which is something we reserve for active members of the forums. (See the Forum Rules for this info.)

If it were me, the first thing I'd be looking at is the number and quality of links you have coming in from other UK-based sites.

[piskie]

a UK based website with UK IP address

Does that mean UK Located ??
I ask because some hosts do wierd things with IPs to make cheaper USA located Servers apear to be UK located.

[Randy]

Sorry, I should have made that clear after I edited the post piskie.

The domain does actually resolve back to a UK-based IP number. So it's not a situation of UK host giving out US IP numbers.

[piskie]

No Randy, I meant the reverse, a US location giving out a UK IP

[glengara]

Page 2 to page 9 is a surprising differential, try an allinanchor search on both "web search" and "pages from the UK" and see how closely they match the "normal" search results.

[Randy]

Ahh, I see where you're going I think. Though I'm not sure how much difference it would make, if any. I don't recall having any direct experience with such a situation.

You're right on the setup piskie, if I had to guess. The host is one of the biggies (Hostway) who has offices in both the US and the UK. The IP number of the site traces back to the Hostway UK location, with a London address given.

Howver the Nameservers for the domain both point to IP numbers noting Hostway's US operations center with a US address in Chicago, IL. It wouldn't make a lot of sense from a networking standpoint to have only US-based nameservers pointing to a server if it was physically located in the UK. Especially for visitors coming to the site from the UK.

Has anybody seen the Nameserver locations have an effect like this?

FTR, I checked the hostway.co.uk site and the nameservers for txtlocal's site are set up exactly as they specify. I wonder if they can make available a couple of UK nameserver IP numbers to see if changing them would make an appreciable difference or not?

[glengara]

Would the fact that it turns up in "pages from the UK" not point to something other than an IP/nameserver problem?

[Randy]

Dunno Glengara, that's why I'm asking.

We know they look at the IP number of the host server. What I'm not at all sure on is if the location of the Nameservers have any bearing or not. I've never heard that those have any bearing, but I can see how the engines might use it as some sort of (secondary?) indicator as to the actual server location. Rightly or wrongly.

[piskie]

Relying on recall from some years back, I had an issue with a Host on just this.

I had a reseller account (Cpanel shared hosting) on a UK located server with about 6 clients targetting the UK with .com sites. All of a sudden, the .com sites dropped like stones, but the 10 or more .co.uk sites seemed OK. When I spoke to a Techie who was willing to talk off the record, he confirmed my suspicion that some functions had been moved to the USA recently, but said they expected no adverse effects because of the way they had done things. Beyond this vague terminology, he would not be specific.

I moved the .com sites to "Proper" UK hosting and within about 6 weeks all was well.

What jiggery pokery they did I am not sure, but I sure noticed the results on Visitors and SERPs.

[pxc433]

Hi

I'm new to the forum and I just wanted to note the same situation for our UK .com site.

We are a UK-based company with some international clients but our most important market is the UK market. However, we rank more strongly in the US and Australia/NZ than at home. And what's more the situation is getting gradually worse.

We've picked up some really good links recently based on quality (that takes hours of effort, but is another story). We moved up elsewhere, but at home we've dropped and it's like the links we've worked hard to get don't count. These links are from all over the world.

The sites above us include .com and .co.uk domains.

Our IP address is UK, as reported by whois. I don't know what the nameserver refers to above, can someone enlighten me?

With some exceptions, the sites above are not great in terms of quality and don't rank internationally.

As a final note, there seems to be much more volatility on the google.co.uk results.

[Randy]

Welcome psc433 ! (IMG:style_emoticons/default/hi.gif)

I cheat in getting the nameserver and other IP numbers because I use some tools on my servers. However you can find it in Windows, it's just a couple more steps.

Basically first look up your domain in any of the Whois tools out there. (I have one over on my personal site if you need one.) In the Whois record you should see a reference to at least 2 nameservers by their address.

Next you need to convert this address into an IP number. The easiest way to do this is via Trace Route in the Windows command prompt. So go to Start then Run and type in cmd and hit enter. In the command prompt window type in the tracert command, followed by a space, followed by the first nameserver address you got. For example:

CODE

tracert ns1.domain.com

The very first line of the output will tell you what IP number this address resolves to. It'll look something like:

CODE

Tracing route to ns1.domain.com [66.166.130.10]

Where the number inside the brackets is what you're looking for. FTR, you only need the first line of the trace route. You can CTRL +C to exit out of it as soon as you have that info.

Then take that IP number and plug it into a Whois tool that supports IP number lookup. Mine does, not all do though. It should tell you all sorts of information about who has ultimate responsibility for and control over the IP number in question.

Repeat and remix for any other nameservers you'd like to check.

[pxc433]

Thanks for that. I ran the checks, and the Nameserver is UK as well.

[thx1138]

Hi,

I'm experiencing similar problems, however, perhaps even more oddly our domain is a .co.uk one, yet for most of the major search terms we target we seem to rank better on google.com than on google.co.uk

Any ideas why this would be?

Charlie

[Nueromancer]

Hi,

I'm experiencing similar problems, however, perhaps even more oddly our domain is a .co.uk one, yet for most of the major search terms we target we seem to rank better on google.com than on google.co.uk

Any ideas why this would be?

Charlie

We have a customer with diferent sites targeting the uk and usa markets.

Maybe the kw/niche is more competitive in the uk and sites in the us don’t use English English so you rank well for the term because its not commonly used in the usa.

One Example is in the uk we target "free sprog Vouchers" vs "free sprog coupons" in the USA.

Replace sprog with the real term just so HR doesn’t start ranking for the term :-)