Server location affect link effectiveness?

Hi All,

First post on here having spent a couple of weeks browsing around.

Great site, so much useful information!! I looked around for the answer to this question but couldn't find it, apologies if I've just missed it.

Currently, I host a lot of sites on UK servers through various hosts. All my client sites are .co.uk. Recently, I've been thinking of trying a US host (largely due to costs). From what I've read and understand of PR, this will be unaffected by server location. However, I wondered if links within my sites might lose some effectiveness if they point to UK sites whilst being hosted in the US??

I'd be greatful if anyone has any thoughts on this at all!?

Cheers,

Jonnyyyyy

there is *some* weight in the big G's algorithm for the server location. if you are using .co.uk's domains and targetting a uk audience then you want the server in the uk ideally.

i had a client lose his page#1 position for a .dk domain for google.dk after moving his site to a usa server for example.

Cheers zestoi, had heard a similar thing myself.

However, google position isn't really that much of an issue for me. The sites that would be moved would really just be supporting sites for the more important ones (which would be hosted in the UK).

Whilst they're properly developed sites, they were never intended to be money spinners, so it's really the link effectiveness which is my main concern.

If anyone else has any thoughts / opinions I'd love to read additional comments!

ah, i see you mention PR. i stopped caring about PR a loooong time ago...

Weight used to be much more on Location of server, I think now the big G realises the use of having "offshore servers" so to speak, with hosting costs practicality etc. However, I ALWAYS host my sites in the country of my primary target audience.

My 1st ever hosting package was a n00b buy though 1&1 and they host all their servers/datacenters in Germany, in my analytics I had a large % of people who were visiting from Germany and for no apparent reason but from the hosting location. I corrected this, however, I do have a client with 1&1 now and the problem isn't apparent, but they'll shift over soon and I am sure local ranking will improve.

Certainly. I stand by the fact that server location does in some way effect the link juice passed down to your site. However, what matters more is the domain extension.
I'll tell you about a simple case study :
I had a website ranking #3 on Google.com, Yahoo and Bing for a particular keyword but seen nowhere in the top 10 pages for Google.co.uk. (My domain name was a .com )
I registered a .co.uk domain name and built a page on it with about a thousand words of content and pushed in my backlinks a couple times on the page. THAT IS IT!
I DID NOT BUILD ANY LINKS TO THE .CO.UK DOMAIN, it just got indexed because I pinged it a couple times.

Guess what? 4 days later my website started ranking #5 for the keyword I was targeting in Google.co.uk!

My point is that you have to help Google figure out what countries and locations you want to rank in.

zestoi said:

i had a client lose his page#1 position for a .dk domain for google.dk after moving his site to a usa server for example.

Click to expand...

Are you sure it was because of that, or could it have merely been Google Dance?

Thanks everyone. Ended up opting for various UK hosts in the end, just to be on the safe side. For the moment, focus is UK so felt it the safer and more guaranteed option, just in case - seemed to be certain variables that we couldn't be certain of. Is it just me or is the UK market becoming a little more competitive too in terms of cost?

Having said that, I'd love to know of way a to categorically test the differences. Site speed, PR and Ranking is easy to track, but I could only think of duplicate content sites to measure a sites 'power', which of course Google would punish pretty quickly - anyone have any other ideas?

Zestoi, really!? I thought PR was a massive factor in link effectiveness. Surely a link from a related PR5 is better than one from a related PR1? What made you give up on it?

jonnyyyyy said:

Zestoi, really!? I thought PR was a massive factor in link effectiveness. Surely a link from a related PR5 is better than one from a related PR1? What made you give up on it?

Click to expand...

Yes, i think so myself. Surely a link from a related PR5 is better than one from a related PR1...