Hey all.
As CCA pointed out, Aus searches may not index sites whose name servers resolve to US hosts.
I didn’t know this… I’ve done many Aus sites here, and Google doesn’t seem to mind either way. In fact a recent Aussie scientific research site I did a while ago is now ranked ABOVE it’s American counterpart. (sorry:)))
So I’m curious… when so many businesses from all over the world host in the US, why should it matter? And which search engines are affected by this?
Hi antic, with google anyway, if my customer has a .au domain then they will be listed locally…but if they have a tld like .com, even though my nameservers are .com.au they relove back to us ip address so the site would not be listed locally.
If the .com site was on au servers then it would also be included locally.
I beleive .au site resolving back to au ip would rank best though not sure on this.
Optimally my ns1, ns2 nameservers would be ok to resolve to us ip address for OS customers, & ns3, ns4 nameservers resolve to au ip address for locals.
Then the possibility of offering customers a choice of which nameservers to be on would be very cool.
Not sure if this is possible or if its what jodo already has in mind??
If it is dependant upon the nameservers, I don’t see how the localized hosting would help except for the speeds of the load.
We really can’t do putting DNS servers all ver the world, as already with ns1/2/3/4 we get TONS of complaints and people seem to think it is the end of the world. Some people even go so far as to tell us there is never any reason to have a ns3/4 (they obviously don’t think too big)
Thanx stephen, just want to be sure where i stand…
Am i correct in saying that a customer who buys hosting from me on an au server, the nameservers would still be ns3 or4 & ip address will resolve back to US location?
So i guess when the AU servers come on line i wont be able to buy a second reseller account & set the reseller account up on the AU servers?
TO be honest, this is the first I have heard of this, I am trying to think of any possible workarounds, not coming up with any yet…
CCA, when you say “listed locally”, what do you mean exactly? To be honest, I can’t see any difference in the way Google displays AU, UK or US listings based on the location of the server. Seriously, they’d be shooting themselves in the foot if they did make that distinction, because how many UK, AU, Russian, Israeli, Irish, Portugese, Mexican etc. web sites are hosted on US servers? A great deal.
For example, search for the term “microbiology” in google. The Australian Society for Microbiology appears ABOVE it’s US and UK counterparts, even though you can tell with a Tracert that it’s hosted on a US server. It doesn’t seem to make any difference as far as I can see, and your clients should not be concerned about it. I think they’re worrying too much. 
I think cca is saying google.com is global, but google.com.au is “local”
and I do notice the ASM is there on the .com.au version.
Its fine if the customer has .com.au domain etc. but if they only have .com it will not be listed in local results unless its hosted on australian servers.
eg:
go to google.com.au
select pages from Australia
site:google.com
no results, now you will say but google.com is not an australian site which is true. How does google.com.au know google.com is not an au site? A: from ipaddress /location of servers FAQ: Google Search Crawling And Indexing | Google Search Central | Support | Google for Developers
In your example if the ASM owned the .com domain too results for .com would also not be listed locally but .com.au would & are.
btw. if you did your search for “microbiology” sitting at a computer in the us somewhere then the results would probably be the otherway round..possibly site would not be listed on same page even.
This is the nature of localised search & is big money not foot-shooting
Cool, I can see what you’re saying now. This is quite interesting… Search in Google for “agar group” (globally). You’ll see that the Australian Group on Antimicrobial Resistance comes up first. They’re hosted in the US, but the domain is .ORG not .org.au. Then click “pages from Australia” and try again - nothing! They’re not there… very interesting! The tld .au makes all the difference to Google… hmmm…
Now search for “Antimicrobial” in “pages from Australia” - up comes www.azonano.com first - a .com domain, but the IP is 203 meaning it’s hosted in Oz.
So I guess the .com.au domain name is weighted more heavily than the hosting location, which makes sense. If you’re hosting in the US and want to appear in “pages from Australia”, then get a .au domain.
So, CCA, if your client already has a .au domain, they don’t have to worry. Otherwise, yeah they’d best be hosted in Aus.
Very interesting indeed!