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Will hosting your website outside your target country hurt your rankings?
January 27th, 2009 | by Peter Cullen |How Important is Your Website Hosting Location?
If you’re targeting a specific country, for example Ireland, should you have your website hosted in Ireland?
Are the search engines going to give your website more relevance if you’re hosted in your target country?
I used to think that you should have your website hosted in your target country, but have seeing 100’s of websites analysed by Interleado’s All in One SEO Workbench SEO Software during the last 6 months I’m not convinced anymore. In fact, in certain industry sectors, having a ccTLD for your target country no longer even seems that relavant either.
Let’s look at a very quick case study.
Imagine I have a keyword – 5 star hotel dublin – what is the configuration of the top ten ranked websites on google.ie – searches from the web?
| Website | Hosted |
| www.merrionhotel.com | UK |
| www.dylan.ie | UK |
| www.fitzwilliamhotel.com | IE |
| www.goireland.com | IE |
| www.fourseasons.com | US |
| www.fitzwilliam-hotel.com | IE |
| www.boo.com | IE |
| www.dublinevents.com | IE |
| www.marriott.co.uk | US |
Four of the top 10 results are not hosted in Ireland, the top two results – which get over 50% of the organic traffic – are hosted in the UK and there’s only one result in the top 10 with a ccTLD of .ie.
So, what does this tell us about having the correct ccTLD and hosting aligned to your target country? This is granted only a vert small case study, but more extensive analysis by our SEO Software has shown us that when it comes to certain sectors – where you are hosted and what your domain extension is simply does not matter.
So, should you rush out and get the cheapest hosting option available if you’re in a sector that doesn’t give as much relevance to your hosted country? There is no real bottom price when it comes to hosting, getting a reliable hosting company to look after your online business is always recommended though.
In terms of SEO though there are more pressing areas where you could be focusing on that will give you more bang for your buck.
What’s your experience of hosting – do you think it impacted on your ability to get good rankings? What sector are you in?
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11 Responses to “Will hosting your website outside your target country hurt your rankings?”
By organic website traffic on Jan 28, 2009 | Reply
Good information on hosting and the impact of hosing your site at different location is fantastic. I hope its really worthful for me while lanching a new site
By Aedan on Jan 30, 2009 | Reply
Interesting post. I also used to think that having a .ie and be hosted in Ireland was important for search results if your target audience is in Ireland (ours is). I wonder if some of the sites listed above that are hosted in UK/US have their geographic target set to Ireland in Google Webmaster Tools? Maybe this is also a factor in determining the search results?
By Anderson Ward on Jan 30, 2009 | Reply
Google has answered these issues regards the Google SERPS on the following two posts.
Where in the world is your site?
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/04/where-in-world-is-your-site.html
Better geographic choices for webmasters.
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/10/better-geographic-choices-for.html
By Peter Cullen on Feb 2, 2009 | Reply
@Aedan, yes they may have GEO targetting setup on Google webmasters, but I think the jury is out on the real impact of that functionality.
By Aude Tribot on Feb 6, 2009 | Reply
The importance of the hosted country is more important if you want to be well-ranked in your target country (ex: Ireland) + pages from Ireland .
If you type in Google.ie “5 star hotel dublin” and tick the box “pages from Ireland”, most of the websites appearing in the first results page are hosted in Ireland.
So I believe that’s still an important factor.
By Teresa Hart on Mar 16, 2009 | Reply
Here’s one to think about. We have the website http://www.workathomeireland.com hosted in the USA and it’s on page 1 of Google.ie (when pages from ireland is ticked). We were told that we’d never get onto the first page of google because we were hosted in the USA and don’t have a .ie domain name. We are on the first page so thought I’d point this out. We’re also on page 1 for “the web” (non-ireland specific). The fact that we have Ireland in our domain name may have an influence.
By Peter Cullen on Mar 17, 2009 | Reply
@Teresa, Intersting comment Teresa, what keywords do you rank number one for?
By Tima on Apr 21, 2010 | Reply
Thanks a lot for this post Peter. Actually, Anderson, I have liked your first link.
By bundublog on Jul 15, 2010 | Reply
I don’t think this will matter at all! Ranking is based on so many factors, this will be the least!
By DavidO on Jul 26, 2010 | Reply
I have .com sites hosted in US and UK and have not noticed any problems with this. The latest I have seen from Google is that they do look at the IP address of the server for its location but “we try not to rely on the server location alone”