Country Variations

[Margaret]

Not sure where to post this and not sure if it has already been covered....

I am currently sitting in a hotel in Ljublijana, Slovenia and have just tried out a standard search which I know people have used to find us - 'holidays in bavaria'.

The results are quite markedly different from what I get when I do the same search from Bavaria - and therefore presumably different from searches done from the UK.

Has anyone investigated this? We are looking at moving the hosting for our German language site from the UK to Germany to try to get better results on German searches. Does anyone know anything about this aspect?

[Hells Bells]

Margaret, I get different results from my Googling in France and UK.

[Margaret]

So should we develop different strategies for each country and how?

[Hells Bells]

There is a French site called IHA which keeps coming up in my google searches there. I have listed on it. I have had several enquiries, but so far no bookings.

[Margaret]

I suppose this is the background to HR switching from .com to .co.uk. I just thought the distinction was by language, not actually by country where you are sitting and searching.

[Martha]

My understanding of this...

Google weights towards a site that is *physically* hosted in the country that you are *physically* in. So I am looking to host the chalet site in the UK soon, to see if this makes a difference. I know that someone else here did some experiments with this and found it really affected results, I will try and find the thread.

Whether it is worth putting a separate german version on a german host, I don't know. I would imagine that it might though, if it wasn't too expensive.

Also, the order that sites are shown in is quite different in each country. We have made it onto page one for "chamonix chalet" in swedish, icelandic and a few other versions of google...Still not quite there with the UK or US one. Language is only one of the factors that change this.

Hope you're having a good time, I've heard that Slovenia's lovely.

[Martha]

Here's the earlier discussion
viewtopic.php?t=4802&postdays=0&postord ... n&start=15

[Margaret]

We already have a German site, hosted in the UK and are looking to move the hosting to Germany - we get superb search results for the English site but nowhere near as good for the German site, for which there could be a number of reasons. Hosting location might be one.

[cottageguru]

This is fascinating. I've never considered this before. I am looking for more UK traffic to my site listing my Ontario rental. All my hosting is at present in Canada, so perhaps I would be better looking for a UK host, or setting up another site with this focus.

Does it work the same for a blog, or is there no difference?