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New guy from sydney been into domains for year =)

James

Top Contributor
Hi all,

My name is James and I was referred to this forum by a few people on Namepros.

Basically I have been into domains, websites, SEO and Social media for the last 6 years have traded over 100 domains, built some decent websites and now I am looking at .com.au domains as I never have touched this market =)

I was looking at companies like omg.com.au and how they develop keyword rich domains, what the legal issues behind this?

Few questions

1. who is the best to register domains with for .com.au?
2. who is the best to host my site for .com.au?

I have heard some dodgy stories abotu companies and want to stay away form the shonksters.

thanks all =)
 

Oz.

Top Contributor
Welcome to DNTrade James.
1) To register domains, few ones to look at, and more than a few to stay clear of. Personally can recommend Domain8/Drop.com.au.

2) Hosting, Aussiehost.com are pretty good.
 

DavidL

Top Contributor
Hi James,

Welcome to DNtrade! 100 domains is a great milestone - well done. In answer to your questions:

1) legal issues - similar to gtlds. Trading off TMs (cybersqatting & typosquatting) in a no no. The difference here is auDA will get you without even the need for a UDRP. There are some rules regarding domain eligibility that you should read up on too. Make sure you check out the following at least http://www.auda.org.au/policies/auda-2005-01 and http://www.auda.org.au/policies/auda-2008-10/

2) Good registrars include Intaserve, Hostess and Drop.

3) for small sites you may as well host in US (Hostgator etc) for the value.

Hope that helps

David
 

James

Top Contributor
Hi if I was buying .com.au domains I would rather host the domains in Australia for SEO value.

I already have servers on Godaddy, Hostgator and others in the US because I target the US market on all my other domains.

Thanks for the links I will check them out, Yeah I have seen that drop.com.au site was interesting I will admit, what I need is a Aussie host but too =)

And I don't cybersquat any domain, I am here for Development and SEO, I have created over 80+ sites =)
 

DavidL

Top Contributor
Hi if I was buying .com.au domains I would rather host the domains in Australia for SEO value.

I think the .au will always tell Google the site is Australian. Once Google makes that decision, it applies the 'local website bonus' and then it's down to the other SEO stuff for the rest of the ranking.

Ie the 'Australian-ness' of a site is a yes/no rather than a scale.

Would be veryu interested if anyone has any evidence to the contrary?

PS one thing to consider though is speed. Esp in light of Google Instant so to save page load time, local hosting could be worth considering
 

soj

Founder
My experiences with Google and sites for Google AU are much the same, all of my sites are hosted in the US, and with the .au in the domain, it shows up in the "Pages from Australia".

On another experience, I have VLTurbo.com, which is also hosted in the US, but shows up in the "Pages from Australia" results. Google might look at where most of the traffic is coming from and classify it as an Aussie site...
 

FirstPageResults

Top Contributor
I don't think it matters where you host with a .com.au domain with english content as Google knows hosting infastructure is cheaper in some countries.

Although for large .au sites I always try and host in AUS.

If the site is large and multinational on a .com domain I use culture - internationalisation (i18n) and localisation (l10n) and set the sub folder in Webmaster Tools to show up in local search results

example.com/en-US/
example.com/en-AU/
etc

ibl's and local addresses also help

* Server location (through the IP address of the server). The server location is often physically near your users and can be a signal about your site’s intended audience. Some websites use distributed content delivery networks (CDNs) or are hosted in a country with better webserver infrastructure, so it is not a definitive signal.

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=182192
 

Oz.

Top Contributor
You can also check this in Google webmaster tools to be safe:
Site configuration -> Settings -> Geographic target

But for Australian based webhosting check aussiehost.com. Certainly a noticeable speed difference using it compared with hostgator.
 

James

Top Contributor
hi all,

I actually work a SEO and Social Media specialist for a global agency (websites and domains is my part time hobby) I know from experience that if you have a .com.au you need to hosted in Australia its a bit of a SEO 101..Just having a .com.au is not enough ;)

Even if you use microformats and GEO meta data it is still not enough, the country where you host it is another big factor =)
 

davids

Top Contributor
I rank #1 for a few different sites in the Results from Australia with .com's, hosted in the US, and with no geo meta data... from my personal experience, an aussie host isn't something you need.
 

James

Top Contributor
Depends what type of keywords you are targeting, for sure I rank number 1 and page 1 for 100s of keywords with .info's .coms and what not in the AUS Google yet they are for low competition terms.

If you are targeting something with high competition and you have a bunch of competitors all with .com.au's all hosted in aus all with aus links pointing to the domain these types of things do come into play, I am referring to Finance and Insurance verticals.
 

DavidL

Top Contributor
On another experience, I have VLTurbo.com, which is also hosted in the US, but shows up in the "Pages from Australia" results. Google might look at where most of the traffic is coming from and classify it as an Aussie site...

That's very interesting...

I know from experience that if you have a .com.au you need to hosted in Australia its a bit of a SEO 101..Just having a .com.au is not enough ;)

Do you have any evidence for this? Are there any rigorous case studies out there? I'm not disputing what you say but I'd love to be convinced. I have dozens of sites hosted O/S that rank well but if there's a way to do it better then I'm all ears!
 

James

Top Contributor
That's very interesting...



Do you have any evidence for this? Are there any rigorous case studies out there? I'm not disputing what you say but I'd love to be convinced. I have dozens of sites hosted O/S that rank well but if there's a way to do it better then I'm all ears!

Server IP location does have a impact its one of say 200 metrics that Google looks at when ranking your website, sure you can change the GEO location but from my experience the host location IP is more important.

Even matt cutts states it:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keIzr3eWK8I
 

DavidL

Top Contributor
That video didn't really convince me either way. It states that they look at the extension, server location and WMT to determine location but we already knew that.

He said, talking about web hosting "if you find a great deal in a particular country and you really want to stay in that country with your web server, I think that's fine"
"Fine"? Enought or optimal?

Think is with most ranking factors it's a scale. Content ranges from a score of 1 to 100, say. As does authority abd backlink counts etc.

With location it's either in or it's out so if the TLD has specified that why look at other factors is my thinking.

I might try an experiment...
 

James

Top Contributor
Have you ever dealt with Google on a face to face level they will never confirm or deny any thing.

I have been doing SEO for about 6 years and I am just putting over my recommendations to what I feel works best, the problem with the SEO is their are no 100% guide lines out their from Google you just have to know what works best from experience and industry contacts.
 

Lorenzo

Top Contributor
I have a hard time believing host matters.
If that did, then for small countries that do not have businesses offering hosting (think the little islands..), then results will be all over the place.
 

snoopy

Top Contributor
Depends what type of keywords you are targeting, for sure I rank number 1 and page 1 for 100s of keywords with .info's .coms and what not in the AUS Google yet they are for low competition terms.

If you are targeting something with high competition and you have a bunch of competitors all with .com.au's all hosted in aus all with aus links pointing to the domain these types of things do come into play, I am referring to Finance and Insurance verticals.

Have always hosted in US (including an Australian finance related site) and have never heard of it being a problem. The video is very interesting though. I wonder if this is something that Google uses to categorise and as opposed to working out ranking. ie if Google concludes your site is aimed at Australian visitors (from other factors) will it then alter the ranking depending on server location? I don't really see why they would (unless there was also speed issues), but maybe they do?
 

DavidL

Top Contributor
I asked this question to the very knowledgable guys at SEOmoz and here is their response:

Hi David,

It's a tough thing to measure scientifically, of course, but over the past few months I have seen a number of respectable SEO folks recommend hosting in the country you're targeting.

•Dev Basu - http://devbasu.com/ses-toronto-2010-managing-global-seo-campaign/
•Christian Arno - Search Engine Journal article - http://www.searchenginejournal.com/top-tips-for-multilingual-marketing-and-seo/22637/
•Bill Hunt - Search Engine Land article - http://searchengineland.com/global-vs-local-how-to-let-google-know-how-to-treat-your-site-36192


You may be able to work around moving your hosting by using the country flagging in Google Webmaster Tools, and having .au domains will help as well.

So to help you decide, try a little experiment: do one of your top searches, and see where your site places. Look at the other results, and find one with a .au domain extension, and then do geolocation to figure out where it's hosted. You're looking for a handful of sites hosted in Australia who rank near you.

Then, use Open Site Explorer to look at the backlink profiles. Mainly just look at unique domains linking and domain authority. Is your site approximately in the ballpark here? If the other sites on the page of results seem to have weaker link profiles, then their hosting in Australia might very well be a factor.


But then a Google employee seems to contradict this here

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=2e61e49baa5a6eaf&hl=en

Yes, we do try to find context from these two factors (I think this article is being updated to be a bit more clear though :)) -- however, if your site has a geographic TLD/ccTLD (like .co.nz) then we will not use the location of the server as well. Doing that would be a bit confusing, we can't really "average" between New Zealand and the USA... At any rate, if you are using a ccTLD like .co.nz you really don't have to worry about where you're hosting your website, the ccTLD is generally a much stronger signal than the server's location could ever be.


So still none-the-wiser. I think I will pull one site over though to see if it makes a difference...
 
Last edited:

Lorenzo

Top Contributor
I asked this question to the very knowledgable guys at SEOmoz and here is their response:

Hi David,

It's a tough thing to measure scientifically, of course, but over the past few months I have seen a number of respectable SEO folks recommend hosting in the country you're targeting.

•Dev Basu - http://devbasu.com/ses-toronto-2010-managing-global-seo-campaign/
•Christian Arno - Search Engine Journal article - http://www.searchenginejournal.com/top-tips-for-multilingual-marketing-and-seo/22637/
•Bill Hunt - Search Engine Land article - http://searchengineland.com/global-vs-local-how-to-let-google-know-how-to-treat-your-site-36192


You may be able to work around moving your hosting by using the country flagging in Google Webmaster Tools, and having .au domains will help as well.

So to help you decide, try a little experiment: do one of your top searches, and see where your site places. Look at the other results, and find one with a .au domain extension, and then do geolocation to figure out where it's hosted. You're looking for a handful of sites hosted in Australia who rank near you.

Then, use Open Site Explorer to look at the backlink profiles. Mainly just look at unique domains linking and domain authority. Is your site approximately in the ballpark here? If the other sites on the page of results seem to have weaker link profiles, then their hosting in Australia might very well be a factor.


But then a Google employee seems to contradict this here

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?tid=2e61e49baa5a6eaf&hl=en

Yes, we do try to find context from these two factors (I think this article is being updated to be a bit more clear though :)) -- however, if your site has a geographic TLD/ccTLD (like .co.nz) then we will not use the location of the server as well. Doing that would be a bit confusing, we can't really "average" between New Zealand and the USA... At any rate, if you are using a ccTLD like .co.nz you really don't have to worry about where you're hosting your website, the ccTLD is generally a much stronger signal than the server's location could ever be.


So still none-the-wiser. I think I will pull one site over though to see if it makes a difference...

Hi David,

I think the Google's employee is clear and i may explain it with an example:

company X uses a .com from the USA
company Y uses a .com for Australia

Since both are .com, the Google will use any possible info to locate the market, in that case the server IP should matter.

But if company Y uses .au then server location is irrelevant.

Given the fact that many Americans use .com rather than .us, server location may affect them but that's the difference of having ccTLDs.

I have seen this question since 1999 with .it domains. Same thing.
 

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