Hi all,
just getting an understanding about how Google search ranks sites due to geographical location.
Ranking according to geo location suggests that millions of sites would need to move hosting to their own country.
Millions of sites are hosted in in foreign countries due to
- no proper service where they are,
- radically cheaper in other places
- faster servers
- better security
etc etc
So my understanding is:
1 Using a country domain - .au, .us, etc means you will be “geo ranked” (my term) as being in that country and this (ranking aspect) cannot be changed.
2 Using a generic domain - .com, .net, .biz etc means you will be geo ranked as being in the country where the server is and can only be changed by moving the hosting to where you want the site to be ‘geo ranked’.
MY SUGGESTED SOLUTION:
While meta tags have largely fallen out of use, Google still uses them (for instance, “Description” if there is one there) when nothing meaningful can be gleaned from a site’s home page. Surely the geo situation could be solved by using a meta tag for engines to use called Location where the site owner could nominate their preference with something like “latitude/longitude”, “country”, “country/province/”, “country/province/city”, “global” (for online shops where location is irrelevant and unwanted) etc.
QUESTION A
Do I have it right in 1 & 2
QUESTION B
Some Australian hosting companies have their servers in Australia and some use servers in the US (I believe most hosting customers would not know either way nor be aware of it being a ranking factor). How does this affect (complicate?) the situation?
QUESTION C
If we make it clear “where we are,” with “Sydney, Australia” on the home page and in meta tags," then is all of the above of no significance, except perhaps where a business is adamant about wanting to rank number 1 in their favoured area?
thanks