Pros & Cons of UK v USA Hosts

Dave Fisher · 28th July 2005, 03:38 PM

Thinking about transferring from another hosting provider to UnitedHosting. Noticed when browsing their website that the servers are located in America.

I know there is plenty of other points to take into consideration when doing SEO but is it true if your site is hosted in another country the uk search engines will not rank the site as highly as if it was on a uk server ?

Any comments would be most appreciated

Thanks,

Dave

UH-Simon · 28th July 2005, 03:43 PM

SEO is not something I am particularly fluent in but I know this issue has been discussed a few times on our forums. You may want to have a search but just because the servers are in the US does not mean that you would be excluded from UK specific searches. We are number on Google UK for a number of keywords and we are on the servers in the US. The IP's we use are in our own name as a UK organisation. An interesting discussion took place below:

UK specific searches on Google and hosting in the USA

UH-Matt · 29th July 2005, 02:28 AM

It depends on your domain name and also where the actual IP is registered to.

Our IP blocks are registered to us (UK) even though our servers are usa, so you shouldnt have a problem. Also if you use a .co.uk domain you wont have any issues as google will auto set you as a UK site.

Search the forums here as there are already many threads on the subject where you might find some excellent insite and advice.

Vger · 29th July 2005, 03:36 AM

In my pre-oscommerce and pre-UH days I was once turned down by Splutt for a web listing. The site was .co.uk and hosted in the UK, but I also accepted payments in US Dollars, and that's the reason they turned my site down.

I wasn't about to turn away dollar payments just because of a UK search engine like Splutt.

Vger

UH-Matt · 29th July 2005, 08:43 AM

Yep, each engine has its own scoring, some of them pretty complex and interesting. Yahoo did a good conference session on this sort of stuff at HostingCon...

Dave Fisher · 29th July 2005, 08:46 AM

thanks for the comments Matt. Still a little worried because although 2 of the domains are .co.uk the other 2 are .com

Still at least you guys get back to me which is more than can be said for my current hosting company !

Regards,

Dave

ChrisEvans · 29th July 2005, 11:57 AM

Dave... are the domains for the same site?

My solution which has worked really well:

purchase .com and .co.uk:

on the .com - make php return:

header('location: http://www.mywebsite.co.uk');

on the .co.uk - make php show your actual web site.

This way google etc have picked up its a uk site.

Doesn't have to be the same domain name either - it can be

blabla.com => blablablablalbla.co.uk

Chris

Andy · 29th July 2005, 04:20 PM

Yep that's the sort of thing i do Chris but via a different method.

My main website is a .co.uk domain..let's call it mysite.co.uk. Then I have the corresponding mysite.com and myothersite.co.uk setup as aliases of mysite.co.uk

By adding the following to a .htaccess file mysite.com and myothersite.co.uk get redirected to mysite.co.uk.

Code:

Options +SymlinksIfOwnerMatch

RewriteEngine on

# Redirect addresses which are not www.mysite.co.uk
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^www\.mysite\.co\.uk$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$         http://www.mysite.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

Using the .htaccess file makes it easier than having to add the header() call to every php page...plus it will work for non-php files too.

Andy

ChrisEvans · 29th July 2005, 04:24 PM

Hi Andy,
To every page?

I just did error document 404 to /index.php - and index.php has the header(); in it.

Chris

Andy · 29th July 2005, 04:42 PM

Ahh ok

I guess my mod_rewrite rule should be quicker with less webserver requests though (at least for the index page anyway). Does your method end up with a load of 404 errors in your error logs though Chris?

Andy

Vger · 29th July 2005, 04:51 PM

I'm sorry I don't get why you need to do the .htaccess. I have domains that are added as aliases of domains on my account, and all that I do with them is to point them to my dns addresses from my UK Reg or 123-reg control panel, and they're picked up on the server as aliases. Doing it this way shouldn't have any search engine implications.

I use 301 permanent redirects via .htaccess for permanently moved pages etc., but not for domain aliases.

Vger

Quote:

Originally Posted by Andy

Yep that's the sort of thing i do Chris but via a different method.

My main website is a .co.uk domain..let's call it mysite.co.uk. Then I have the corresponding mysite.com and myothersite.co.uk setup as aliases of mysite.co.uk

By adding the following to a .htaccess file mysite.com and myothersite.co.uk get redirected to mysite.co.uk.

Code:

Options +SymlinksIfOwnerMatch

RewriteEngine on

# Redirect addresses which are not www.mysite.co.uk
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST}   !^www\.mysite\.co\.uk$ [NC]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$         http://www.mysite.co.uk/$1 [R=301,L]

Using the .htaccess file makes it easier than having to add the header() call to every php page...plus it will work for non-php files too.

Andy

Andy · 29th July 2005, 05:10 PM

Just means that the actual address in the browser address bar gets rewritten to the .co.uk site. So if you type the alias www.mysite.com in your web browser it changes in the address bar to www.mysite.co.uk instead. Ensim's default behaviour of aliases is to just serve up content for the domain being aliased but with the aliases url (ie. www.mysite.com in this case)

The theory behind my redirect is that if a search engine comes across a link to the .com it will index it as the .co.uk instead. Indeed google no longer references my site via the .com domain at all. Whether or not being indexed as the .co.uk makes a difference to whether a search engine indexes the page as a US or UK domain is search engine dependent and not well defined.

Andy

ChrisEvans · 29th July 2005, 05:34 PM

Hi Andy,
For the UK results, my search engine position jumped enourmously when I did what I did with the redirect etc.

With regards to logs... I don't know - I have 2 sites setup - 1 for the .com and 1 for the .co.uk.

The .com I just ignore and any mail sent to it is instantly forwarded on.

Chris

ChrisEvans · 29th July 2005, 05:35 PM

PS: The actual point of this thread was to find out whether a USA hosted site would still appear in UK results.

I can say now... since doing this little redirect thing I've done... I'm listed for over 100 popular keywords in top positions.

Chris

UH-Matt · 30th July 2005, 04:43 AM

Thread has served its purpose i feel and now is heading off topic. Closed