Benefits of local hosting

I'd say get into reseller hosting for a start up, It's really simple and effortless on the technical side of things for you. You can still act as a white label though, if you're unable to fix technical problems... since you're a reseller, it's managed and you're entitled to support. It's also cheap and cost effective. Also allows you to focus on bigger things, like client base, SEO, marketing etc.

I'd personally just use one domain. The .com is still the biggest boom, so it'd stick with that for now. Google can be a bit iffy about same site domains, although I'm unsure to what extent and if this is actually still the case. Redirects work ok though...

If your client base is going to start from within side the UK, I'd recommend getting a server from a London based hosting company. London has great datacenters. For example, my client base is Europe. Our current server location is Maidenhead.

I'm one for building and expanding businesses world-wide. Start from the UK, build up in and around Europe etc. But that is just my line of business, I can understand it's very different for web hosting.

To put it short, any where in the UK is fine

eh, wot, back in the room...

To be fair, we haven't had a decent Kip rant for a while, so maybe its time to wind you up

Hi,

I have one more solution to your problem. You can go for Local Search Marketing or LSM. It is done locally to advertise your business locally. It is highly focused to target local areas through internet. It is done to increase visibility in the Google maps and it is very helpful for your business. As i belong to this field, i think it is best suitable for your business. There are many LSM service provider are there in the market who can help you in growing your business visibility in the market. I would like to suggest you local search marketing for your business.

I hope this will help you in solving your problem.

Thanks

How does that relate to the physical hosting?

For info, I have a contact in Google and have posed this question, as this debate goes round in circles with no 100% clear answer, and he has passed it onto the relevant team, but made no promise if I'll get an official answer.

Fingers crossed, as it would be nice once and for all to confirm that Google really doesn't care where you website is physically located, but does care which audience you are targeting, eg .co.uk / geographic settings etc, which is what I believe.

Yes would be great to get the confirmation and make this clear to all of us

Any particular reasons?

Don't worry about it, user got banned for pointless posts.

My Google contact got back to me with the following:

..just come back with the following from the search team, info is dated 2007 but still relevant:

In our understanding of web content, Google considers both the IP address and the top-level domain (e.g. .com, .co.uk). Because we attempt to serve geographically relevant content, we factor domains that have a regional significance. For example, ".co.uk " domains are likely very relevant for user queries originating from the UK. In the absence of a significant top-level domain, we often use the web server's IP address as an added hint in our understanding of content.

So I read it as, if you have a .com, the server is in the USA, and you want to serve pages to UK traffic, then location can be a problem, although, you can still set a geographic target in webmaster tools, but there will no doubt be some penalties.

If you have a .co.uk domain, then it will assumed that you are serving UK content, regardless of server location, so no problem.

But later this year, as an experiment, and to satisfy myself 100%, I'm going to loadbalance our UK directory from the US and the UK, and compare the results. What I expect is to see a minimal increase in google traffic, but possibly more traffic from things like the Ask search engine.

So that means I 'd better change my hosting to the UK?

As you're on a .com then not hosting in the UK could mean you suffer in the rankings.

Or see if you can get the .co.uk then redirect the .com to the .co.uk

Googles primary focus seems to be on the Top Level Domain, with secondary on the server IP address location.

There is no problem to get the co.uk
But how exactly do I redirect it to .com?
Will I not loose the current ranking and all the rest?
What will happen with my .com ?