Setting a geographic target for your website in Google

Posted on 12 August 2008 at 03:22pm. 2 comments.

I have had to produce multiple reports in the past explaining why certain websites aren’t appearing in Google UK when ‘pages from the UK’ is selected. The answer was always related to the geographic location of the hosting server itself e.g. if the hosting server is in Norway, then it wouldn’t appear. Well quite some time ago, Google introduced a ‘Set geographic target’ option within their Webmaster Tools which solves this issue. If only it was around a bit sooner.

The new website which I created for Oxyl8 suffered from this exact problem. They had purchased hosting from 1&1, but the website didn’t appear in Google UK when ‘pages from the UK’ was selected. On closer inspection, the IP address of the server was actually located in Germany. Setting the geographic target in Google Webmaster Tools to the UK, and being patient for a few weeks eventually led to the website appearing as required.

In most cases, I would imagine the importance of this issue is something which will be highlighted by the client. I personally don’t use the ‘pages from…’ feature as I think Google already provides slightly custom results based on the country you are visiting from - and that includes whether you’re using google.com or .co.uk.

Comments

  1. Richard Clark // 3 October 2008 at 03:01pm

    Ah ha Ben,

    How I remember the days of that report writing!

    It’s definately a handy tool. I think it could be handy if you are searching for business results on Google Maps for example. If you included a vcard in the site too then no doubt that would help with the mapping as well.

    Rich

    PS - The new site looks ace mate.

  2. Ben // 3 October 2008 at 03:52pm

    Good point regarding Google Maps Rich.

    Still lots of work to do on the site, but it’s a starting point!

Leave a comment

Fields marked with * are required. XHTML is enabled, but for spam prevention I have limited the amount of links permitted to 3.

Your email address will not be published or shared with anyone else.