Does hosting site in it's own Country, help Google Ranking?

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simonmlewis
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Does hosting site in it's own Country, help Google Ranking?

Post by simonmlewis »

We have been approached by someone in Spain to design and host a web site. We can buy it from Spain easily, but hosting it there is proving a problem, whereas we can host it easily from the UK.

However, is it a problem to host a Spanish web site, from a UK server? Or is Google more interested in speed and reliability, that it's hosted IP address?

The domain would have a *.es on the end, so maybe that's all Google cares about.
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requinix
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Re: Does hosting site in it's own Country, help Google Ranki

Post by requinix »

Actual location and domain name doesn't really matter, but the performance does. However UK to Spain isn't going to be a big difference.
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Re: Does hosting site in it's own Country, help Google Ranki

Post by simonmlewis »

Thanks. If we had a domain like www.thisisourspainsite.es, but our mainsite is www.simonsmainsite.es, and we pointed the first domain to the "main" one, would Google pick up the first one?
We ask this as we now know the main domain to get, but there are many we can buy, which are very good for the location, but no point if Google won't see it as there will be no content. Unless via the registrar we can do a 301 - but again, does this help with google?
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requinix
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Re: Does hosting site in it's own Country, help Google Ranki

Post by requinix »

Depends how you did the "pointing":
- Google will observe your 301 redirects, but it won't show any thisisourspainsite.es pages in its search results.
- If you use DNS to CNAME the two to the same server, it'll work but you'll get penalized for duplicate content. You can use canonical URLs to remove the penalty but then you're back to only seeing one site in the search results.
simonmlewis
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Re: Does hosting site in it's own Country, help Google Ranki

Post by simonmlewis »

How do I check if a site is climbing up the search rankings, in the foreign country?
Is there a way to tell Google (pretend I am in Spain) for example?
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requinix
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Re: Does hosting site in it's own Country, help Google Ranki

Post by requinix »

Try using google.es. If you're not getting obviously different results, or just want to be sure, then look for a free proxy hosted in Spain (I'm sure some exist) and go through that.
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Re: Does hosting site in it's own Country, help Google Ranki

Post by simonmlewis »

I have found one: http://proxygaz.com/country/spain-proxy/
But how do I implement on my laptop to channel my browsing or using Google.es thru it?
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requinix
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Re: Does hosting site in it's own Country, help Google Ranki

Post by requinix »

Your browser and/or operating system do it. There's a special place where it asks for proxy information. You enter the information in there.
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Re: Does hosting site in it's own Country, help Google Ranki

Post by simonmlewis »

Yep I found it. Problem is, I tried four of those proxy IPs and either require a login, or they just fail,. Is it all just trial and error? Is there any way to find out what proxy someone in spain is already using, and use that?
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requinix
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Re: Does hosting site in it's own Country, help Google Ranki

Post by requinix »

Someone in Spain won't be using a proxy. The proxy server lives in Spain so when you route your internet connection through it, sites will think you're in Spain too.

Trial and error? I would expect a list of proxies to mention whether each supports anonymous access but if not then yeah, I guess you'll just have to try them until you find one that you can use.
Hanka
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Re: Does hosting site in it's own Country, help Google Ranki

Post by Hanka »

From my experience, if your target country is Spain, you should go for local domains (.es) since Google will give local websites priority in the local search than the rest of the domains.
jaelajens
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Re: Does hosting site in it's own Country, help Google Ranki

Post by jaelajens »

I guess it helps very little though, I had a friend who was ranking well in Google.co.uk for .com websites, I guess it was because he was being hosted in UK. But country specific domains are the best to rank locally.
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