Does server location affect rankings?

[Webrevolve]

Hey guys,

I'm just wondering whether you can help me out here.

We're considering moving our servers to a new country but are a little hesitant to what  - if any - SEO impact it would have on our clients' sites.

For instance, if all of our clients are UK-based but their server isn't, would that affect their rank in Google UK?

Or is it simply just a case of whether moving a server would affect the site speed or not?

[Aleyda]

Hi Matthew

The IP location it's a signal although it used to be stronger in the past but is still is. Take into consideration that is not the only signal to inform Google that your site is relevant towards a specific country: The usage of a ccTLD or geolocating in Google Webmaster Tools, plus specifying the region also in the hreflang annotations and your content itself: adding the location where it's targeted to in the different elements of the pages, are also additional signals that you should align as much as you can to inform Google where is your relevant country market.

So when someone asks me this question looking to move their site towards a local hosting or a service that can provide the IP of the country where the site is targeting what I ask is that if it also makes sense to make the move for other reasons (better speed for your visitors in that country, better support, etc.) and from a cost perspective, then they should do it. Nonetheless, if it's a painful migration that will cost too much and they still have other factors to optimize, then I would likely recommend to see first the impact of these other aspects that won't cost that much to implement.

In your case is different, since from what you say is about "moving away" your server from the relevant country, then in this situation is about saving or earning in other aspects that are not SEO since you will be taking away a signal that you were already providing. So instead of this what I would do first is to try to find another service that can keep providing you the UK IP and that also meets your other requirements, trying to keep the signal you were already giving while achieving the goals you're looking to have by changing your hosting service.

In the case this is impossible, then yes, you would likely have to assume you will be losing a bit of the "geotargeted" relevance you were already giving, and in dependence how you're optimizing the other relevant factors towards this, it might have a stronger or weaker effect.

Thanks!

[RyanKent]

Matthew, I believe you have stumbled upon one instance of why SEO is so confusing to many people. There is a lot of complexity and the answer varies based on the situation.

I believe you have taken the above quote from: http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=62399. I would always encourage you to share the source of any quote, so others may evaluate it within full context.

You shared you "found on numerous discussions and boards" information. Once again, I am confident you can find mis-information on any SEO related topic on "numerous boards". In 2011 when I was working with sites penalized for manipulative links, many sites had posts stating "Google will never penalize for manipulative links. They can't...." On our journey towards "SEO truth" please share the exact source.

Back to the point in hand, I would gently suggest you may be doing your clients a disservice by changing their geo-target. As it says in the same article from G, " ...if you have a site in French that you want users in France, Canada, and Mali to read -- we don't recommend that you use this tool to set France as a geographic target."

While some of your clients may only target local search results and therefore can be geo-targeted to the UK (a restaurant for example), you may service other clients who have a strong desire to rank in neighboring countries. Setting a geo-target for the UK may impact the site's rankings in other countries.

Why would you consider moving server locations? I am not passing judgment, but it sounds like you may be changing your client's server for your convenience, not theirs. My agency maintains a dedicated server in Florida, which works very well for US companies targeting a European audience. It would be more convenient for us to move our Canadian clients to our server, but it is not in the client's interest for us to make the move. Even if a client requested the change we would try to talk them out of it if the target audience was primarily Canadian.

[Webrevolve]

Hi Ryan,

Apologies if my last response was a little vague. In answer to my question, along with some answers from SEO moz, and with my own thoughts in mind, prompted me to look a little deeper.

I found on numerous boards and discussions that the server location now has little benefit i.e. its very unlikely you will get any SEO boost directly from location.

To sum up, and with help from the Big G itself:

" If you change hosting provider for a country domain, there should be no impact. If you change the hosting provider of an international domain to a provider in another country, we recommend using Webmaster Tools to tell us which country your site should be associated with." In either case, there will be no impact.

The Matt Cutts video is now over 4 years old, and a lot has happened in that time. Server location is no longer a factor all things being the same.

However, the speed of that server is, as Kevin rightly says. However, Kevin also says the "most stable sites use domestic servers" - so I guess it depends what is domestic to you. i.e. If Kevins server is in the US and I am in the UK, and his domestic server is the most stable, fast and reliable, then switching my hosting to the US from the UK should only benefit my site, as it will be faster, more stable and more reliable - so as long as I set my location within webmaster tools, i'll be good to go.

Hope this helps.

[RyanKent]

Matthew, your statement conflicts itself. You shared you are "reliably informed" but then you seem to be questioning the reliability of that information.

This community is about learning. We would all love to know the correct answer. You asked if the country of a web server's location mattered. Three people responded and we all seem to agree that, to the best of our knowledge, it does matter. If you have reliable information to the contrary, please share the source and details.

[Webrevolve]

Thanks guys.

I'm reliably informed that it doesn't now affect SEO and that Google video is out of date.

Would this be correct?

[KevinBudzynski]

A part of Google Algo is most likely server response time/stability and more likely than not, the most stable sites use domestic servers.

[RyanKent]

Moving a server outside of the country of your target audience can impact ranking. A server located in UK is an indicator the site is more likely to be relevant to the UK.

With the above noted, there are numerous other methods you can use to show relevancy such as setting the site's geo-target in Google WMT, using the meta language tag such as "EN-UK" and showing a physical address within the UK

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hXt23AXlJJU

[BeardoCo]

As long as your server is located in the country your business is located I think you are fine.  I would find it odd if in the Google's Algorithm it weights server location with any significance.  Although I could also see that having a foreign hosting location could have an impact on Google.