Location of server - UK or Ireland?

Rob_H · 4th October 2007

I know little about web hosting, but was advised that www.aventurehost.com was as good as any (service etc). However I have spoken to them, and they host their sites in Dublin, Ireland. I want to get free traffic to my .co.uk domain from UK customers. Do I need a UK hosted website? The guy I spoke to at AventureHost said Google looks at UK and Ireland together, but I was unsure if he had his sales or techi hat on?
Any comments you may have on AventureHost would be good too.
Thanks

pickaweb.co.uk · 8th October 2007

Hi,
If you are trying to target UK visitors to your site you should try to host your website on a UK server.
Otherwise you may get a better position in the Irish search engines.

darvine · 8th October 2007

Are you looking for reviews of this web hosting company?

hosting365 · 9th October 2007

As long as you have a .uk domain, you will get listed just fine.

Google uses either UK IP address space, or .uk domains as its way to filter searched in google.co.uk

alexcf · 9th October 2007

You will probably find that colocation in Ireland will be a bit cheaper, and if that's more local to you, then go for it. If not, then think about where you're based and go on from there. If the box goes down, and you need to zoom over to the DC then trust me, you want to be local.

(Either that or somewhere with good remote hands)

neilrbowen · 9th October 2007

hosting365 they take all into consideration, a .uk domain in the uk will do better than a .uk domain in china. I've no idea if they will care about ireland though :P

TDMWeb · 9th October 2007

Neil is correct, a UK IP address does make a difference in our experience, whether or not a .uk domain is used.

lastchancehotel · 9th October 2007

From past experiences with hosting .co.uk domains in funny places, I can say that yes, both aspects (IP and domain name) make a difference. I believe they have methods in place to prevent someone from registering many domains with many TLDs, all hosted in one place, containing content that isn't actually relevant to that market specifically (Ie, the 'show pages from the uk only' option google provide).

That said, google's algorithms are pretty much 'black boxes', so chances are it's changed (or will change again) in the future.

If in doubt, take the safer option.

Jan

JamesSykes · 10th October 2007

Another one for IP + Domain location - it does make a difference.