Benefits of local hosting

Depends now on deep you want to get. To redirect it, you will use something called a 301 redirect.
Heres a google help page on it. 301 redirects - Webmaster Tools Help

In theory, Index Ranking, PR, inbound links etc are preserved by this method. But it is accepted there can be an amount of decay, heres an interview with Google man Matt Cutts who discusses the merits and issues of 301's
Eric Enge interviews Matt Cutts

Anyone typing in your .com would automatically be sent to your .co.uk

End of the day, it's down to pro's and con's. If you think you have a definite problem and are being hurt by not having a .co.uk then investigate a 301 redirect. If you can move your hosting to the UK, so you have a UK IP address and select UK as a geographic option, then maybe try that first.

If you are happy with your ranking, traffic and conversion rate, then leave it be

Its a complex topic, and not one to quickly act on based on a single forum post. Do some more research, get some more opinions and then decide on a course of action.

So two years later any wiser?

I've researched this a few times over the years and interested to know your thoughts? Potentially could have 2 .com domains both hosted in France - but one more targeted at UK.


Surely, the french words would be a big hint!

Aware of setting the geotarget on Google but more interested on real impact regardless of this - if anybody has evidence?

Hiya Mr Martin Sir

Well 2 years is a long time in this here interweb malarkey, and we have pretty much swopped over how we do things.

I stand by comments from years ago, and think it is still valid, Google looks at your at your top level domain first. But the in the last 18 - 24 months, speed has been an increasing factor in Googles algorithm, and for a large database driven site like us, every ounce of speed counts.

Although our US hosting was superb (although now been swallowed up by IBM which is prob the death of it!) I was starting to get concerned with transaction times. Location wise, and the fact it was a UK site with a US IP didn't make any difference.

So we had a little flirt with some UK hosting (my previous track record with UK hosting companies isn't good) and low an behold, after flawless service in the States, we migrated our UK site back to the UK, and had multiple outages within 30 days. Can't name them for legal reasons, but they are a big outfit.

So had to migrate again, and should have gone there in the first place, but moved over to Rackspace. Service has been superb, on a par with what we had in the US, so finally have found reliable UK hosting.

Although transaction times are now lightening fast, we didn't see any difference in traffic/conversions from when the server was in the US, and is now in the UK, which proves the point location wise, it's irrelevant.

Transaction times wise, I think we were just ahead of the curve, as it's only recently Google has made lots of noise about it, and it is is supposed to be a strong signal in the new algorithm. So location is irrelevant, but speed is important.

A couple of months ago, we decided to migrate our US site over to Rackspace. During the summer we put MLS UK behind an IDS system, and to justify the cost a bit, have migrated MLS USA over to UK Rackspace and shut down our US hosting. The US site has a much smaller database than the UK, so transaction times haven't been an issue, and in the couple of months it has been over here, there has been no difference to traffic.

Again this confirms to me location is irrelevant, regardless what any of the experts say.

Thanks, suspected that may be the case but good to get confirmation.