Sphinn - The Definitive Guide To Website Geo-Location

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The Definitive Guide To Website Geo-Location

Went Hot: September 23, 2008 - 5:15 am
Posted By: MattSawyer 286 days ago
Topic Type: News Story (Jump to http://www.datadial.net)
Category: SEO

Being based in the UK I find that SEOs on this side of the pond have to get very familiar with website geo-location factors. It’s an unfortunate quirk of search engines that one of the main criteria that search engines use to determine a websites location is the location of its webhost.

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from Nunney 286 days ago #

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What I always want to know is how much and how a .com site hosted in the UK (that's the UK results sorted) is handicapped in US delivered SERPs? My evidence is mixed so I know that hosting in UK can be overcome - I look to source of inbound links and behaviour patterns (like clickthrough and time on site) matched with users location.

from ciaran 285 days ago #

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Interesting post but by concentrating on how to get found in UK only results misses what is, for me, one of the biggest challenges where a .com will often outrank the same company's .co.uk in searches on Google.co.uk - shall we call it the Amazon issue?!
;)

from NickWilsdon 285 days ago #

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No offense Matt but it takes some cojones to call a post the "definitive" guide to a subject ;) You've got good info here but some areas could be expanded on.

1) Do you have any evidence that "Geographic Location Of The Domain Registrar" plays a part in deciding the geolocation of the domain? This seems speculation to me and shaky ground to decide geolocation on. Many Registrars sell a range of domain names these days as they can purchase contracts on the generic extensions. The Russian RU Registrar sells com/net/org for example.

2) You missed out the content-language META tag. This is different from the language on the page.

3) You don't mention geo tag elements Google doesn't use them but they are a player in the geo-location area.

4) Location of incoming links is more than a marginal concern. Previously too many links in one geographic area could push you up in those SERPs and reduce your ranking in other regional SERPs. Alan Webb first discovered this with his English/German site a few years back. As he recently wrote to me, this has become less of a problem but, “one should still try and get at least 70% of links from sites on the same language for ranking purposes.”

I asked the same question to JohnMu recently in his Twitter Q&A and he responded:

"An old site of mine got many Chinese links - no problem. Within reason, they’re just links. Perhaps put a translation up? "

The key point there is "within reason". This is a factor Google consider. An unnatural number of links outside your chosen geo-targeted area will have an effect.

5) Google's site targeting function is useful but carries with it several issues. I won't go into all of them here but you should consider that this is not a geo-location strategy it is a Google geo-location strategy. There are other search engines and directories out there, especially in emerging markets. In Russia for example, Google is not the no.1 search engine.

So while it may save companies "from having to purchase domains and/or source hosting in many different localities." That advice may not serve them well in these markets.

Hope that helps.

from MattSawyer 285 days ago #

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Thanks Nick, some really good feedback :)

1. I'm currently testing this at the moment. A couple of people have mentioned it to me before. Although I don't believe it overrides any TLD or hosting factors I have seen lots of .tv, .fm, .cc domains ranking in the UK serps that are not hosted over here - It may go some way to explaining that.
I firmly believe that registrar location and whois data is another factor that should be considered.

2/3. I'll add that in. I'm certain it's not used for search engine location purposes, but you're right, it should probably be included.

4. That's interesting. When you're talking about, “one should still try and get at least 70% of links from sites on the same language for ranking purposes.” are we talking about location in local versions of Google, or "ranking purposes" as in benefitting from the language used in the anchor text and surrounding page text? Either way it's a point worth noting.
Personally I've not seen anything that suggests the location of the links overrides any hosting or local TLD factors - not saying they aren't used at all though.

5. Very true, those of us in the UK are sometimes guilty of focusing on Google a little too much sometimes, though it does become more painfully obvious when larger international companies get things wrong

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=wikipedia&btnG=Google+Search&meta=cr%3DcountryUK|countryGB

Thanks again Nick, with your permission I would like to include some of what you've written here in the post?

from NickWilsdon 285 days ago #

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@MattSawyer

No worries Matt, feel free to use any of that in your blog. Re: point 4. you need to link out to Alan Webb. For some background you should go back and read this post from 2005.

However, inbound links can override all other factors into duping Google that the page is of a different language than it actually is. This has disastrous consequences, for example if a German page focusing on German language readers gets a highly disproportionate amount of links from english language sites. Google ignores the fact the server is in Germany, the top level domain is ‘.de’, the meta language tag is “de” and considers the site english - which results in dropping a lot in google.de but rising in Google.com.

He updated me on the situation recently by email, I quoted him in my answer to you. Even though this issue has lessened, there are some obvious implications to using GWC to geolocate directories within your site structure.

from GlobalFusion 284 days ago #

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Matt,

This post seems to be far from being the definite guide, though it has good information. Some thoughts:

You are not making a clear definition of the terms geo-location, geo-targeting, and IP delivery in their pure sense. In fact, the article is more about International SEO than anything else. Geo targeting, a feature provided by Google, is related to the TLD. Geo-location and IP delivery are based on IP information more than the TLDs. Here’s more about How to Geo Target Your Site with Google Webmaster Tools.
You said: “There are several factors that are theorised that effect the location of a site in terms of search engines.” Were you talking about global, regional or local SERP based on language differentiation? This is a huge topic itself that only a few Web Globalization+SEO firms are able to grasp in their entirety.
You said: “I firmly believe that registrar location and whois data is another factor that should be considered.” Unless you have more concrete evidences, then, we are talking about speculation, which ultimately won’t help much for ranking purposes. Also, have you ever wondered that if what you believe is a fact, then spammers will be using that for a push on local search, right? Also, that will raise the privacy issue, but since big G is a registrar, then they’ve already blessed by ICANN to access data without even selling domains. There are many issues related to this statement that cannot be easily overlooked.
In terms of your TLD approach, it is kind of simplistic because you are not properly addressing the effects that ccTLD can have compared neutral TLDs, regional and more recently city-based TLDs. For Google for instance, a ccTLD will have a pre-determine destination compared to a neutral TLD. How about the more regional (like .eu) or .lat (which can be used for Latinos or Latin America) More here Domain Names Move Towards Geo Targeting and Multi Languages.
You omitted not only the content-language Meta tags, but also other important aspects of internationalization and content negotiation.

A definite guide needs more research and depth than one post.Though we are all making progress as a community.

Augusto