Hosting Location & Site Performance

[Avalon]

This issue has been coming up regularly and need some feedback on other's experiences.

Basically, I have many clients who have sites hosted in Canada and some in the US. I'm noticing that when a site is hosted in Canada, their rankings are terrific especially on Google.ca. That's great if you do business in Canada but I do have clients who do business in the US.

Right now I have a client with a .com address who is hosted in Canada but seriously needs to have better ranks on Google.com. It's a fairly niche market and competition is not a big issue, however, for general keywords their site rocks on Google Canada but are virtually invisible on .com We have been doing a lot of link building on relevant sites plus got them a good listing on Yahoo.com

The question is, would it be beneficial for us to request the site be moved to a US based Hosting company. They are willing to make the change.

[Marcia]

The question is, would it be beneficial for us to request the site be moved to a US based Hosting company. They are willing to make the change.
No, that wouldn't affect rankings in the regular SERPs, which is strictly a matter of page/site optimization and links. The Canada only listing is a matter of geo-targeting, so even in non-competitive markets, the competition is less because the non-local sites are eliminated from the numbers.

I'm in the US and have US sites, but one of the hosts I use has the server physically located in Vancouver, BC. So because of the IP number, it gives the opportunity to rank in a Canada only search, which really means nothing for those sites - and has no bearing on ranking in regular SERPs.

[I, Brian]

Having it hosted in Canada would certainly be better than US hosting - then at least you've got extra promotion via the listings on Google.ca via your IP location.

[Avalon]

Having it hosted in Canada would certainly be better than US hosting - then at least you've got extra promotion via the listings on Google.ca via your IP location.

It doesn't do us any good to have high ranks on Google Canada so it's back to the question - would it be worth our effort to move the site to a US based hosting service - I actually should have posted this in the Google section...

[dannysullivan]

Well, I've moved the thread over to the Multilingual Search Markets & Non-US Engines section rather than the Google section. While you are asking specifically about Google, I want to encourage you to think a bit beyond that. Yahoo is also really important, and MSN will be as well.

With Google, they've long said that country hosting location can be a key factor. So want to do well in Canada? Yep, be hosted in Canada. Want to do well in the US? Yep, get yourself over there.

Some info on the current MSN over here: USA vs. Canada - Different Results on MSN (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=1164), but it also touches on Yahoo and Google, as well.

Also see: Multiple Country Sites Hosted in U.S. (http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?t=1512) with some info to consider and the third post from Nacho with even more suggested reading.