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You’ve done everything right, your site is still not showing up in Google searches after several months, and you can’t figure out why. It could be your IP location - specifically the country in which the server that hosts your web site is located.
You want your site hosted in the country you are targeting. So if your site is about real estate in the United States, that is where you want your server to be located. However, if you’re selling condos in Japan, then your site should be hosted in Japan. When a search engine returns results one of the factors it checks, to know what country’s results to serve up, is where the server is located.
The problem is some USA companies have servers in other countries, specifically Canada. In fact, GoDaddy just opened up a Canadian facility.
For that matter, with the global nature of the Internet, you may not even be aware of what country your host company itself is actually located in.
To find out your IP location, go to Domain Tools and type in your URL. Down toward the middle of the page you’ll see this section:
Server Data
Server Type:
Apache/2.0.61 (Unix) PHP/4.4.7 mod_ssl/2.0.61 OpenSSL/0.9.7e mod_fastcgi/2.4.2 DAV/2 SVN/1.4.2IP Address:
123.45.9.78
IP Location
- California - South Lake Tahoe - New Dream Network Llc
Response Code:
200Blacklist Status:
ClearDomain Status:
Registered And Active Website
This tells me my server is located in the USA, California specifically. But if it was located in Canada my site would not show up in USA Google searches.
I did a little checking for an Active Rain reader whose dynamic real estate site just wasn’t ranking, and discovered his site was hosted in Canada. His site may have ranked well in in that country, but that sure wasn’t helping him with the local searches he needed!
Popularity: 26% [?]
9 Comments
Thanks for sharing a nice effective tool and tip.
I need to ask about sites who needs a global representation, which server are good for them. I have a business and offer virtual products. My host is located in US(I checked that through your given tool) but my site is ranked better in Australia, What is reason for that?
I have used domain tools before but never noticed the IP location or blacklist status. Thanks for pointing that out. All four sites I or my daughter runs are located in the US! The interesting thing is that I actually rank higher for my main KW on almost any Google country search site than I do for the main Google.com one. I show up at 3 on Google.fr but 7 for Google.com. This is true for most other countries as well. Any insight on this?
The Firefox Plug In SEO Quake has as one of it’s toolbar options the Domain Tools quick link.
Virtual Impaxs last blog post..Do You Measure Customer Service By Satisfaction or by Complaints?
@Fredrick - I had that happen with one of my sites too - it did terrific in Australia, and I have no idea why.
@Ashley - Do you have any backlinks from sites in France? Location of backlinks can have an effect. Beyond that I don’t know - looks like I’ll be doing more research on this!
@Virtual Impax - Yes, I use SEO Quake and also SEO for Firefox - 2 excellent plugins.
Kay I don’t know if there are any backlinks from France. I am 3 higher for Google Mexico, 2 for Hong Kong, 1 higher for Japan, 1 for Canada. I realize some aren’t that much of a difference but it is strange how much higher I show up over Google US. There was one period of time I was #1 on about 6 other country searches but around #8 for the US. I don’t know how to see if I have backlinks coming from other domains. I know I have commented on a few UK sites but nothing that I know of from France and certainly not Hong Kong.
I am the same for UK and Australia.
Now if I can just figure out how to attract international home buyers I could work this.
Ashley - I see that you’re on Yahoo hosting; no idea if that would make a difference. I hear you about the International home buyers, however!
One concern I have is there are over 13,000 sites on the same server as yours, and the first domain name that came up was adult related. No site on it yet but not a good sign. I suggest contacting Yahoo and asking for a unique IP address. That will solve that problem. If they can’t offer you that, then I would move to another hosting site.
I hadn’t thought of asking for a unique IP but that is a good idea. I will have to look into that one.
Ashley Drake Gepharts last blog post..Albuquerque Housing Market is Hot!
@Ashley - usually hosts offer them, either free or for a small monthly fee.
Very helpful information. I just learned about this not too long ago, there are so many factors with ranking high in Google that it can be overwhelming!
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