Why am I not getting UK listings? – Blog

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Blog » Why am I not getting UK listings?

Making sure that you get listings in the UK search engines

The most important thing to consider is, ‘how does a search engine know what country my web site is aimed at?’

Search engines like Google and Yahoo index an inordinate amount of data every day. Determining the actual location of a web site is something that needs efficient handling. There are 2 simple ways to determine geo-location of a web site.

Country Specific Domain Name (ccTLD)

ccTLDs are Country Code Top Level Domains that are regulated by their respective nations.

If your domain ends in .co.uk then search engines instantly know that the domain is a UK web site. Respectively .fr, .es, .de would indicate a French, Spanish, and German web site.

I’ve not got a .co.uk

If you have a Generic Top Level Domain (gTLD) such as .com .net .mobi .org .name .biz then search engines will have difficulty in determining your location without one further check. They need to discover where you are hosted. Once they extract your hosting IP address they can determine the geographic location of the hosting and therefore determine which national listings to place your web site in.

But I’ve got a .com and it’s hosted in Canada!

I’m sorry but you won’t get any UK listings that way. You need to consider moving your hosting to a UK server. You could purchase the .co.uk version of your domain name and set it as the primary gateway to your web site (and make the .com redirect to the .co.uk) but you risk losing listings because could be seen as a new web site.

Consolation

There is one potential consolation provided by Google but it doesn’t solve all your problems. Google allows webmasters to log in to Google’s Webmaster Tools area and set the location. But this will only affect your Google listings and other search engines will still use the traditional methods.

What can I do?

[Shameless self-plug] We provide UK hosting and domain registration services. If you wanted to host with us then contact us for more info. Alternatively you can look to other companies and find out if their servers are based in the UK. If you have a .co.uk domain name then you needn’t do anything as you’ve met the criteria.

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