Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Server Location & SEO
-
So I just read an interesting Tweet:
#SEO Tip:#Google takes into account the location of the server (the IP) when projecting the search results#webThis is something I had not thought of. I suppose my question then is HOW does it factor this information into it's results?
For some reason, one of our sites is hosted on a Canadian server. We are a cloud hosting company and we serve all of NA with data centers in the US and Canada... For whatever reason we've used the Canadian server farm for our web server.
Could this possibly be hurting our NA google SERPs?
Anyone have any thoughts on this?
-
Actually, Google position is this:
Server location (through the IP address of the server) is frequently near your users. However, some websites use distributed content delivery networks (CDNs) or are hosted in a country with better webserver infrastructure, so we try not to rely on the server location alone.
So, where the hosting is not relevant, or so relevant as it could be once.
Said that, the IP has a weight, hence you can always associate a IP of your targeted country to your site, even if you are hosting it in your own server (in another country than the targeted one).
Finally, as said by the others, Google looks up at the users IP in order to present what it could be the most useful for him (geo-targeting personalization).
-
@ Christopher -
Excellent advice and I've thought about doing something like this for awhile now. I've been told conflicting things about those .ca addresses. Some say it matters, some say it matters not. We do already own the .ca of our domain and so far it's not pointed to anything... Do I just point it to our server and canonical it or develop a new site geared towards Canadians? As it stands, we have a few pages with Canadian specific content that are ranking well on Google and driving in traffic.
@Supple... It sounds like what you're saying is exactly how I interpreted the Tweet.. Google displays personalized results and factors IP address into that query, sure. So then it does matter that our server lives in Canada, while the majority of our business comes from the US? This, I guess, is my main concern. Thing is, I'm not too worried about it because we get a TON of U.S. traffic and are ranking incredibly well for our target keywords and only improving each week.
Just curious about how this all works.
Thanks for all the input guys, very helpful. Love this community.
-
From my personal experience, it's negligible at least within the United States. It can be easily offset by other ranking factors. I think the site getting served up to the area faster would play more of a role more so than localization of the providing server. With so many companies outsourcing their servers to other areas. It would be a bad way to determine location. Country borders may play a larger role. My recommendation move the .com to the US. Buy a .ca host it in Canada, serve up your content with a cdn and get your content translated to canadian french and run both markets!
-
I'm a developer / seo from Australia and we've found this is correct.
A lot of cheaper hosting companies are obviously in the US and even though they're cheap we've been progressively moving over clients to our servers here for better results. I haven't tested it thoroughly, but I would think even moving a specific site to it's closest location would effect SERP results. Meaning if you were looking for dry cleaning in Washington, you might find it helpful to get a Washington based hosting company. Then, when google crawls your site, it will find the information on a nearby server and this might even make the site slightly faster in terms of response times for requests and this would effect results (even only minutely).
Having said that, like everything in SEO it's just one of the hundreds of factors involved. Moving your site nearby won't fix everything automatically...but it's something that can be easily changed for a relatively small fee.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
My website is not configured in AMP pages, but it is mobile-friendly.
Hi
Algorithm Updates | | rayabahadur
My website is not configured in AMP pages, but it is mobile-friendly.
Last month, my website was ranked to 10 positions for this keyword (Magento Development Company).
Sometimes it's showing on 25 positions but not in the top 5 positions. Here is my URL (for analysis):
https://www.nevinainfotech.com/magento-development-service/
Would you please explain why my keyword rankings are often not showing in the search listings?
Would you mind letting me know is there anything I need to change?
Thank0 -
On page vs Off page vs Technical SEO: Priority, easy to handle, easy to measure.
Hi community, I am just trying to figure out which can be priority in on page, off page and technical SEO. Which one you prefer to go first? Which one is easy to handle? Which one is easy to measure? Your opinions and suggestions please. Expecting more realistic answers rather than usual check list. Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
More pages or less pages for best SEO practices?
Hi all, I would like to know the community's opinion on this. A website with more pages or less pages will rank better? Websites with more pages have an advantage of more landing pages for targeted keywords. Less pages will have advantage of holding up page rank with limited pages which might impact in better ranking of pages. I know this is highly dependent. I mean to get answers for an ideal website. Thanks,
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz1 -
Ecommerce SEO: Is it bad to link to product/category pages directly from content pages?
Hi ! In Moz' Whiteboard friday video Headline Writing and Title Tag SEO in a Clickbait World, Rand is talking about (among other things) best practices related to linking between search, clickbait and conversion pages. For a client of ours, a cosmetics and make-up retailer, we are planning to build content pages around related keywords, for example video, pictures and text about make-up and fashion in order to best target and capture search traffic related to make-up that is prevalent earlier in the costumer journey. Among other things, we plan to use these content pages to link directly to some of the products. For example a content piece about how to achieve full lashes will to link to particular mascaras and/or the mascara category) Things is, in the Whiteboard video Rand Says:
Algorithm Updates | | Inevo
_"..So your click-bait piece, a lot of times with click-bait pieces they're going to perform worse if you go over and try and link directly to your conversion page, because it looks like you're trying to sell people something. That's not what plays on Facebook, on Twitter, on social media in general. What plays is, "Hey, this is just entertainment, and I can just visit this piece and it's fun and funny and interesting." _ Does this mean linking directly to products pages (or category pages) from content pages is bad? Will Google think that, since we are also trying to sell something with the same piece of content, we do not deserve to rank that well on the content, and won't be considered that relevant for a search query where people are looking for make-up tips and make-up guides? Also.. is there any difference between linking from content to categories vs. products? ..I mean, a category page is not a conversion page the same way a products page is. Looking forward to your answers 🙂0 -
How Additional Characters and Numbers in URL affect SEO
Hi fellow SEOmozers, I noticed that a lot of websites have additional characters and words at the end of the URL in addition keyword optimized URL. Mostly for E-Commerce sites For example: www.yoursite.com/category/keyword?id=12345&Keyword--Category--cm_jdkfls_dklj or wwww.yoursite.com/category/keyword#83939=-37292 My question is how does the additional characters or parameters(not necessarily tracking parameters) affect SEO? Does it matter if i have additional keywords in the additional stuff in the URL (1st url example)? If you can provide more information, that would be helpful. Thank you!
Algorithm Updates | | TommyTan0 -
301-Redirects, PageRank, Matt Cutts, Eric Enge & Barry Schwartz - Fact or Myth?
I've been trying to wrap my head around this for the last hour or so and thought it might make a good discussion. There's been a ton about this in the Q & A here, Eric Enge's interview with Matt Cutts from 2010 (http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/interview-matt-cutts-012510.shtml) said one thing and Barry Schwartz seemed to say another: http://searchengineland.com/google-pagerank-dilution-through-a-301-redirect-is-a-myth-149656 Is this all just semantics? Are all of these people really saying the same thing and have they been saying the same thing ever since 2010? Cyrus Shepherd shed a little light on things in this post when he said that it seemed people were confusing links and 301-redirects and viewing them as being the same things, when they really aren't. He wrote "here's a huge difference between redirecting a page and linking to a page." I think he is the only writer who is getting down to the heart of the matter. But I'm still in a fog. In this video from April, 2011, Matt Cutts states very clearly that "There is a little bit of pagerank that doesn't pass through a 301-redirect." continuing on to say that if this wasn't the case, then there would be a temptation to 301-redirect from one page to another instead of just linking. VIDEO - http://youtu.be/zW5UL3lzBOA So it seems to me, it is not a myth that 301-redirects result in loss of pagerank. In this video from February 2013, Matt Cutts states that "The amount of pagerank that dissipates through a 301 is currently identical to the amount of pagerank that dissipates through a link." VIDEO - http://youtu.be/Filv4pP-1nw Again, Matt Cutts is clearly stating that yes, a 301-redirect dissipates pagerank. Now for the "myth" part. Apparently the "myth" was about how much pagerank dissipates via a 301-redirect versus a link. Here's where my head starts to hurt: Does this mean that when Page A links to Page B it looks like this: A -----> ( reduces pagerank by about 15%)-------> B (inherits about 85% of Page A's pagerank if no other links are on the page But say the "link" that exists on Page A is no longer good, but it's still the original URL, which, when clicked, now redirects to Page B via a URL rewrite (301 redirect)....based on what Matt Cutts said, does the pagerank scenario now look like this: A (with an old URL to Page B) ----- ( reduces pagerank by about 15%) -------> URL rewrite (301 redirect) - Reduces pagerank by another 15% --------> B (inherits about 72% of Page A's pagerank if no other links are on the page) Forgive me, I'm not a mathematician, so not sure if that 72% is right? It seems to me, from what Matt is saying, the only way to avoid this scenario would be to make sure that Page A was updated with the new URL, thereby avoiding the 301 rewrite? I recently had to re-write 18 product page URLs on a site and do 301 redirects. This was brought about by our hosting company initiating rules in the back end that broke all of our custom URLs. The redirects were to exactly the same product pages (so, highly relevant). PageRank tanked on all 18 of them, hard. Perhaps this is why I am diving into this question more deeply. I am really interested to hear your point of view
Algorithm Updates | | danatanseo0 -
Local SEO-How to handle multiple business at same address
I have a client who shares the same address and suite number with multiple business. What should be done to optimize their website and citations for local SEO? Is this a huge issue? What should we do so our rankings aren't affected. Will changes take a long time to take place? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | caeevans0 -
Is changing your meta titles frequently good SEO Practice
Greetings, Im a new SEO and really knew nothing until signing up to SEOMoz. After reading the SEO101 and gathering as much information in a short period of time things started to become a little clearer. So I started my first campaign used my new SEO knowledge and input all of my meta information. Then I waited a few days to see what happened with my search result. We had never ranked for a single keyword before mind you. So a couple/few of days go by and I started punching in my keywords and looking through the pages. There I was page three. I was SO happy. I read the entire SEO101 again, realized a little more about what I had to do. So I started changing everything up, adding pictures, I found out what a IMG ALT Attributes were in the HTML editor, bolded text and all the other things I missed the first time around. Three days go by and I move up again. I start to notice my traffic is increasing and I am actually getting organic hits through search traffic. This has never happened before. I am over the moon. But I realize that I have my main focus keyword as the second key word in my title tag. So I switch the two words around, wait a few more days. Here's why I ask my question. The original title tag was still showing up and I was on the first page for both keywords, and I could see both title tags when searching for either keyword. So; Is changing your meta titles frequently good SEO Practice ? Warmest regards, Michael S&M Warning: adult site, NSFW
Algorithm Updates | | Sexandmetal0