Server location affect ranking?

[dunklk]

Hi there! I'm currently developing a content driven web site, the information is relevant to any country so common sense tells me my target audience should be the USA... anyway, does this mean I should opt for a US-based web host (tech support isn't a big issue), will it help with search engine rankings or is this irrelevant?

Also... since I've never had the need in the past, what's the usual way for going about setting up multiple web sites with the same host? Is it usual to register another account, or can one account manage multiple domains? I'm sure every host is different, but I was just wondering...

Thanks!

[pricethat]

Some say that the physical location of the server make a difference, to be honest i am hosting Germany and find that my rankings are just as good as anyones, sometime when the content is near identical on pages as a UK hosted server i still might pop one or two places above.

There are some on the forum that will cry all day about servers physical IP address but i dont think it makes that much difference personally. Maybe if it did have any "weight" as they call it in the serps it might only reflect 5% difference, would be interesting to see what percentage difference it made.

I dont seem to be picking up any more foreign traffic either since the change so its definately not using the ip address as some kind of indicator of where to serve up the results thats for sure.

With regards to actual servers, they tend to be much much cheaper in the USA, plus our strong pound makes it even cheaper, you do have to be careful of what server you use though, some of them are so packed with users that downtime is more common and you cant exactly slap someone in Arizona very easily.

Hope thats of some help

[jasonflk]

I would suggest getting a reseller account instead of numerous individual accounts, you normally have great flexibility including how many resources you can allocate (hard drive/bandwidth) to each account.

[dunklk]

Originally Posted by pricethat I dont seem to be picking up any more foreign traffic either since the change so its definately not using the ip address as some kind of indicator of where to serve up the results thats for sure.

Thanks for the response, very useful! By 'change', I assume you've recently moved your site over to a German host?

Originally Posted by pricethat ...and you cant exactly slap someone in Arizona very easily.

Amen to that!

Originally Posted by jasonflk I would suggest getting a reseller account instead of numerous individual accounts, you normally have great flexibility including how many resources you can allocate (hard drive/bandwidth) to each account.

Thanks, I'll take a look into it!

Cheers guys!