Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Does hosting a site in Australia improve your position in Google search results?

A question often comes to mind is whether or not hosting in Australia makes a difference in Google search results. Google keeps its secret recipe close to its chest and also keeps changing the rules of the game, but it is good to try to work out if you can identify a metric that may or may not affect your position in Google.

There's really two things we're looking at here. The first is the speed of the site. If you use the PING command built into most computers and ping a site you'll get a time value. In my tests so far having the site in Australia reduces the time value to around a twentieth. That's a huge difference. The second is when using what are known as generic top level domains. Domains that are not associated with a country. Google associates .au with Australia but domains such as .com and the many hundreds of top level domains now coming online are considered generic and not associated with a geographical region.

For this test I've moved two sites (www.Computer-Repairs.Melbourne and www.MelbourneCoach.Business) from overseas hosting to Australian based hosting. I've recorded the current position in Google search results for business coach Melbourne and computer repairs Melbourne. Now it is simply a matter of wait and see.

The results of this test will be made available to JustLocal members. If there is a marked improvement that should assist members in making better decisions and if there is no apparent improvement, that also saves members time where they can focus on other areas to improve their positioning in Google's search result. Either outcome is a good outcome.

Kelvin Eldridge
www.OnlineConnections.com.au
Call 0415 910 703 for IT support.

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