Are you an Aussie ?
Many Aussies routinely use the ‘Pages from Australia’ button on www.google.com.au because it automatically narrows your search results to Australian websites.
Did you know that if your website is hosted off-shore, it is more likely to be considered an non-Australian site and so get filtered out of the Australian results and so many prospective Australian clients will not find your offerings ?
A number of smaller web hosting businesses resell website hosting from overseas hosting companies so you may inadvertently be using an overseas host without even being aware of it.
Until recently this was a largely unsolvable issue, but recently Google introduced a ‘geographic targeting’ feature for websites that enables your website to be explicitly associated with a country or region for Google searches.
This and other Google-specific website configuration is provided via the Google Webmasters Tools facility; a tool we use to optimise Google performance for client’s sites.
Fortuately this is less of problem now as .com.au domains are automatically recognised as Australian sites, independant of where they are hosted. If you have a website address that is not .com.au you are at risk.
As over 90% of Australian searchers use Google, it is vital your site is optimised for Google if your business targets clients in Australia.
Risk mitigation strategy:
- Check by searching for your website domain (ie www.yoursite.com.au) with the ‘Pages from Australia’ button clicked
- Register your site on Google’s Webmaster facility or have your internet professional arrange it for you.
- Check your host’s geographic location using the geo-location tools at www.hostip.info/
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