Dangers in where you host your website.

For a long time now I've been advising clients to make sure their website is hosted within the same country where their target audience is. Does this sound a bit irrelevant? Or too detailed to worry about? Not any more. A recent article on the Clickz network supports my recommendations.

The article explains in a bit of technical detail that search engines (especially Google, the leading search engine) filter websites appearing in search results based on two main factors:

• Which country they are hosted in;
• What top-level domain name they use - especially a country-level URL, such as .com.au, or .co.uk

For example, the search engine assumes a website hosted in the USA with a .com domain name, is meant for an American audience.

So... if you have an Australian business (with a focus on Australian customers), are using a .com website name, and have your website hosted at a relatively 'cheap' hosting facility in the USA... you will find it very hard to get your website showing in Australian search results for your key search terms.

For the reasons mentioned above the search engine often wont recognise your website as being Australian, or most relevant for the Australian market.

If you are serious about increasing the ranking of your site within search results pages this is a critical criteria to manage.

I've used this same strategy in reverse to create a website for the American market, using a .com domain name, and hosted at an American provider. The results... nearly all subscribers to that website are from the USA - the target audience.