Hosting location - effect search engine ranking?

[-Ox]

Hi all,

I have a query, if I have a UK based client that uses 1and1 to host, their servers are in Germany, does to hugly effect your google ranking if your site is hosted in a foreign country?

Thanks
-Ox

[enjoygroup]

Hello,

I did not think there was much difference till recently when i moved a site to 1and1 and google rankings disappeared for the site in uk searches because i was only using the .com. Other sites using .co.uk domains on the same server were still ok. But since moving sites to a pure uk host the .com has re-appeared and give 50% of google traffic back (50 visitors a day were missing) and the .co.uk has moved up the listings as well.

So yes hosting the site outside of the uk does affect uk google results.

I original went with oneandone because of the good deal but in the end i was losing visitors so losing money. Uk hosts are more expensive because of high uk bandwidth prices but moving to a uk host is well worth it in the long term!

Hope this answers your questions.

Cheers,
Mark
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Villages Online
www.villagesonline.com