If you are considering moving your hosting from one country to another, you should definitely consider the impact it will have on your traffic. While search engines are becoming more knowledgeable about geography, the technology does have its flaws. This will most likely lead to some changes in terms of search engine traffic, especially when someone is using a country specific search option.

The reason behind this is that search engines work to direct you to your country’s version of that engine. For example, if you live in Denver, CO, you are taken to the USA’s version of Google, which is simply www.google.com. However, if you lived in Perth, Australia you would be directed to www.google.com.au – the Australian version of Google.

This also means that Google wants to return results to you from the same country you are searching from. So, Google tends to give more weight to sites that have either a domain name ending in the same country (.au in you’re in Australia for example) or are physically hosted on a server within that country. Google determines the hosting location via an IP address.

So, ultimately, if you’re going for more traffic in the U.S. then having your server hosted there may benefit you. But, if you are trying to drive traffic in another country, hosting your server in the U.S. could be a disadvantage. Overall, though your domain extension has the most impact on how traffic is channeled from various country specific Google search pages. And most experts believe the difference will be so small that it will be practically unnoticeable.

Related posts:

1. How Important is Your Domain Name?
2. Geo-Location SERP Results for Other Countries
3. How Domain Names Help SEO
4. How to Link to a Specific Part of a YouTube Video