As with many things search engine related its difficult to separate cause and effect.
eg was it moving to the UK host that increased the position in the search engine results, or perhaps the US host had been penalised, or perhaps there was a completely unrelated change in google algorithm that just made it look like there was an increase due to moving host etc...
You get the idea - just because visitor numbers increase you can't always be sure what caused the increase.
But personally I do believe that a site physically hosted in the UK will be shown higher in the search engine results to people searching in the UK.
So moving a site to a UK host is a good idea if you are targetting mostly UK searchers.
Help! I need to change my ISP - any advice?
There is the other side of this coin of course: if you're aiming to attract Americans presumably it would make sense to host in America.
I've some circumstantial evidence on this front in that whilst I've been able to take American listings on the ourinns sites for over a year I've had no properties applying yet when I added the UK I started receiving applications within a few weeks.
Thanks to the other thread on livingfrance I've looked at the breakdown of the traffic and it would appear that google et al are a little more precise about what they're looking for: probably that a geographic based site is hosted where it's writing about ie European content should be hosted in Europe, American content in America.
Which begs the question: if LMH were hosted in Europe instead of America would there be more participants on the forum?
I've some circumstantial evidence on this front in that whilst I've been able to take American listings on the ourinns sites for over a year I've had no properties applying yet when I added the UK I started receiving applications within a few weeks.
Thanks to the other thread on livingfrance I've looked at the breakdown of the traffic and it would appear that google et al are a little more precise about what they're looking for: probably that a geographic based site is hosted where it's writing about ie European content should be hosted in Europe, American content in America.
Which begs the question: if LMH were hosted in Europe instead of America would there be more participants on the forum?
And, on a more general point, presumably you should list with places hosted in your target market.
I know that we get more Dutch/Flemish from a Dutch based site we're on, more Italians from an Italian hosted site and more Brits from a UK hosted site. I'd previously thought that this was down to each site marketing better in their own language (though my listings in each are only in English) but perhaps there's a country component too.
For historic reasons, French properties tend to use .com or .co.uk but has anyone experimented with hosting in France with a .fr to target the French themselves? Presumably if using .co.uk creates an advantage in the UK market then .fr would do for France on the same basis.
Although seeing as our sites were living in Germany (with 1and1 UK), we've never had many Germans staying.
Arnold
I know that we get more Dutch/Flemish from a Dutch based site we're on, more Italians from an Italian hosted site and more Brits from a UK hosted site. I'd previously thought that this was down to each site marketing better in their own language (though my listings in each are only in English) but perhaps there's a country component too.
For historic reasons, French properties tend to use .com or .co.uk but has anyone experimented with hosting in France with a .fr to target the French themselves? Presumably if using .co.uk creates an advantage in the UK market then .fr would do for France on the same basis.
Although seeing as our sites were living in Germany (with 1and1 UK), we've never had many Germans staying.
Arnold