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View Full Version : Hosting an American site in Russia -- SE Friendly?


JustTrying
15-03-2003, 09:54/09:54AM
Finding an ideal hosting situation has been an ongoing drama for me and my clients; either there were hosting providers where the services were good, but very expensive (this is a great option if you have extra money to just toss out of the window); or, the hosting services were medium to poor, but the prices were just amazing (this option is really nice when you are starting out, but today this is not even really an alternative any longer -- especially after experiencing too many teenage hosting companies, too much downtime, and too little technical understanding and flexibility).

Well, recently I have decided to try out a potentially really good hosting provider (in a dedicated server environment) in Russia where everyone I have worked with are very knowledgeable in all of the important areas, they have great connection speeds, and there is somebody always there that I can call and talk to in English relating to tech issues (using my IP phone, calls to Russia are only $.06 per minute, and they have somebody there 24/7). So, I am finally happy about my hosting situation.

YET, there is a fear that I have that all of the hard work I have done optimizing my client's sites "may" be wasted due to the hosts IP address being of course in Russia. This fear is not based on anything logical or proven, just a fear of going into the unknown when it comes to "appeasing" the sensitive sensibilities of the Search Engines.

According to what I have read so far (here and there), there are good reasons to believe that nothing negative should happen to my site's US rankings, but all of the American sites hosted in foreign countries (within the tread mentinoed above) were mostly based in Canada or the UK (which are really not too far afield from the USA in terms of economics, technologies, and acceptance from the SE's); yet, Russia is different. Russia is still a "developing" country that has a lot of "undefined" things about it within the IT arena.

My question is, what do you think that the Search Engines (primarily Google of course) will do differently in terms of inclusion or ranking within the US SERP's since my American sites are hosted on a Russian server (if anything)?

cline
15-03-2003, 15:06/03:06PM
Very interesting.

I think your concern may be well founded.

I have a small client whose site is hosted in Russia. We've tried a number of things to improve his search rankings. It's helped, but we've never been able to get him rankings comparable to his US-based competition. This has always bothered me, because I've never been able to figure out why. He's got the same PR, and he's got better content. But his site has never ranked above #20 for any keyphrase.

maartenvr
24-03-2003, 16:19/04:19PM
It makes no difference where your website is hosted. If you could host your website on the moon it would make no difference! As long as the spider can get to your pages when it wants to!

cline
24-03-2003, 22:16/10:16PM
maartenvr, I wouldn't be so categorical. We do know for a fact that Google uses the geographical location of IP addresses in determining what results to deliver on google.co.uk for users who want UK searches. We also know for a fact that Google uses IP address to determine what version of Google to give the user.

It's not a very big stretch to go from that to Google giving a bit more weight on Google.com to sites from US IPs when delivering results to users from US ISPs.