[Str8TalkingBob]

Hi all, i'm not sure if i've put this in the right forum or not if i haven't i apologize and feel free to move it. I have a question that is something i should have looked into sometime ago but has only just occured to me. I live in the UK but my webhost (Bluehost) is in America i have been with them for sometime now and have quite a few sites hosted on my account. But at the moment i am designing an ecommerce site selling various products which will be mainly sold to UK residents. My question is will having my site hosted with an American firm hurt me in search engines, say if people have their google settings to prioritize UK sites? Will having a .co.uk domain help with this even it is as an addon domain to my account? I've done some googling on the subject and a lot of the answers contradict other answers. I really need to reach UK buyers with this site so would consider moving my hosting of it comes to it, although i would rather not as Bluehost have been very good over the years.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated and i thank you in advance for taking the time to read this.

[rallport]

In short the best practice is to host in your target market country. A .co.uk will also definately help.

Assuming all other things are equal, if Google had to decide between two sites to rank in Google UK - where one if hosted in the USA and the other in UK, the UK one would gain preference.

At the end of the day Google want (read: need) to provide the highest quality results possible to its users. If it isn't doing this then people won't use their search engine, which they obviously don't want.

If a UK user is searching for products they will naturally display UK based results as a preference. Just look at some of the recent changes to Google base feeds.

By hosting your site externally outside your target market you;re giving Google extremely strong signs where to display your results.

If hosting comes down to cost, well that really isn't an issue nowadays.

[BlueDreamer]

^ pretty much what he said, a proper UK host is always better for a UK audience. Bluehost have always a had a good reputation, but there are some equally excellent hosts in the UK as well.