I’ve read - I’m not sure, but I think it makes sense and is probably true, at least to a point - that the geographical location of your sites or blogs - that is, where the server(s) they are hosted in is, physically - matters - and maybe it matters a lot - in terms of SEO.
In other words, if you have a blog, for instance, and it’s hosted in Canada (maybe you live there and have it at home, or maybe you chose a Canadian company), then it’ll get great results in searches in www.google.ca (Google Canada)… but it will be “hurt” in “normal” Google (www.google.com), for instance, appearing only in the 2nd or 3rd page, even though, otherwise, it would show up in the first couple of results.
If this is true, it means that a local site should really be in its appropriate country, but it also means that an “international” (or “country-less”) site, such as this very blog, should, in order to have the best possible hits from Google, be hosted in the U.S., since a lot of people use the “international” Google instead of the “local” one (me included).
And all my sites are hosted in my home server, in Portugal. (They also share the same domain, but more about that later.)
Maybe, in a couple of days, I’ll try moving one of them to a U.S.-based hosting provider, to see whether it makes a difference. It’ll cost me a little, but if hits visibly improve after a month or two, it’ll be more than worth it.
By the way: do you (yes, you! :)) have any experience in this matter?
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Argh i hope this isn’t true though it would make sense when I look at my visitor statistics. My site is hosted in Ireland and I get around half my hits from there currently.