google us / uk serps problem

[smingle]

I have a website which is aimed at UK visitors, however it is nowhere to be found on google uk for my required keyword (which is highly relevant etc) but it is on the 2nd page of google.com

The only difference with this domain, is that it is a .com instead of .co.uk

Can anyone offer any advice please, as this is a ultra premium domain which is being wasted on american traffic at present and it is making me cry with frustration

Thanks

[Kandevil]

Is it hosted in the US? If it is then Google doesn't know that you want to target the UK market, I believe you can tell them using Webmaster tools, although I have no personal experience of how that works, as I always host my .com sites in the UK to make sure this isn't a problem.

[bills2big.com]

Yes if it is hosted outside of the UK, then that is the problem.

[Supercod]

Rule of thumb I have been going by is, if your domain name is .co.uk then where it hosted doesn’t seem to matter however if it’s .com/.net then it’s important that you get on an IP for the country your targeting. Personally I always host UK sites on UK IPs because I know Google checks the IPs, it also checks the on page content (is it English for example) and they are meant to be checking the domain name owners, where they are located and so on, they are a domain name registrar who doesn’t sell domain names, why else would they need the data base of every domain name owner.

I once done an experiment where I hosted 3 different sub domains of a .com on 3 different IPs, 1 in UK, 1 in USA and 1 in Canada. When I typed in the keyword term to find the site in Google UK, USA and Canada it wasn’t much of a surprise to see that each sub-domain hosted in the IP of the country I was targeting was showing before the others (at the time I used the servers to check Google so it thought I was in the same country as their search engine). However what I did find of interest and not sure why, was that the other sites also showed either all 3 or 2 or a sub-domain and the main domain, granted not very scientific but hopefully gives you some pointers.

So to sum up, host UK sites in the UK, however I know people who host in USA, Germany etc with .com’s and don’t have any problem with listings in the UK.

[smingle]

Thanks for all your replies.

To clarify

1. The domain is hosted in the UK
2. The domain is set to UK in google webmaster tools
3. The whois IS an american address

So do you think that there is a good chance due to number 3 ? I thought that would only be a minor issue ?

[channel5]

What is the backlink profile like? This can affect your regional google ranking, if the majority of your backlinks are US based it may be shunting you up google.com

[c41lum]

I agree wi th all the above but also check out Webmaster World .co.uk domains seems to be moving araound in the natural listings at the moment.

When did you notice this if it was last weekend then its more than likely Google tweeking the geo algo.

[smingle]

Why has this been moved to google adwords forums ???? this is a serps question ??

@ channel5 - that is a very good point actually, I shall check out the geo locations of the backlinks

@ c41lum - no it has been like this for a while, however alot of my other sites have been shifting up and down the rankings for the last few days yes.

It is driving me insane as it really is a first class domain too lol