How does Google determine which country a website is based

[Bubb1es]

Does anyone know what Google looks for when narrowing its search to UK only, is it the DNS or domain extension .co.uk .org.uk etc. OR content of the site itself.

I have a UK site with a .biz extension, the servers are in USA. When I do a Google selecting UK only, it's difficult to find any pages, but without the UK selected I have no trouble finding pages from the site.

I'm really targeting UK rather than USA - Do you think I should transfer to servers based in the UK?

Do you guys select UK only when looking for information or shopping on the net.

Any thoughts or ideas?

[BigB]

Either a .uk domain or a UK located server (IP), but it doesn't look at content

You need a UK located server for a .biz domain

[Bubb1es]

Thanks, I thought as much.

Could anyone recommend a good UK hosting company which supports ASP and ASP.net

[giveasyouget]

On a related note I'd like to ask others about experiences with targetting european countries.

I can see that google gives 3 options ot most countries - search the web, search french speaking pages, or search pages based in france
(or search dutch pages/search pages based in belgium etc)

Does nayone have any experience in changing from, lets say, a .com page written in french to a .fr domain (also in french)?

[Paul Wright]

Originally posted by giveasyouget Does nayone have any experience in changing from, lets say, a .com page written in french to a .fr domain (also in french)?

I know it helps to have the .fr domain but it's not that essestial just yet IMO. I get the impression the market still isn't as competitive in these regions.

A quick search for salons d'aéroport (airport lounges) on google.fr pulled out one of our clients in the top 10 who has a .com translated into french and they are still hosted in the uk! Over time we'll no doubt switch them to regional hosting and domain but as i mentioned above it doesn't seem too competitive. I'm sure there are industries that are heading that way though.

Cheers
Paul.

[giveasyouget]

that's good news, thanks - french domain regristration sounds like a bit of a hassle, didn't really want to go ringing up old friends in france to register a compnay for me or something!

Cheers,
Jonny

[Lee_Owen]

I looked into how much they charge for domains in other countries and quite frankly it's easy to see why it isn't competitive and all the restrictions they place on oversees interests as well, it's barmy. Thank gawd for the good old United Kingdom! Always the bastion of free enterprise, I think America actually believes what she says....

From the little I do in overseas search engines, simply translating a page to their national language via bablefish and getting someone to correct it later on, seems to get results.