Nerdistan

A few years ago it did not matter whether you had a .com type domain or an extension specific to your own country.

In fact, I would go so far as to say that it was probably considered quite ‘cool’ to have a .com domain. It gave the impression that you were serious about your business.

Then Google decided to go local and now most local country searches would probably go through the version of Google specific to your own country.

When Google launched my country’s local version of Google (www.google.co.za) I investigated the matter of having a .com domain versus having .co.za domain and how that would affect where you would show up in the SERPS (search engine result pages).

I searched through various forums (on Google itself) as well as other big forums like WebHostingTalk. I also did my own tests. The consensus seems to be that you will only show up in the regional search engine of Google (and I specifically refer here to using your country’s local Google to LIMIT results to your country’s results) if
1) your domain extension (e.g. .co.za or .co.uk etc.) corresponds with the region, or
2) your IP of the hosting server falls in the corresponding geographic region or

The implication of this is that if your domain ends in a .com AND you happen to be hosted physically on an internationally located server, your .com domain will NOT show up in www.google.co.za when the search is limited to South African results.
(How do you know whether your domain is hosted locally or off-shore? There are technical ways to find out but the easiest would be to ask your hosting service provider!)

Now you might argue that people might not use the ‘Limit to results’ option - that they might search world wide. That might be so, but here is another curveball: Even when presenting world wide results, the regional Google search engine gives a preference to local domains.

So here is the bottom line:
- When you have a .com website, make sure that the physical servers that they are hosted on are located locally in your own country
- If you have the option (and your business is aimed at your local market), always register a local domain for your business website.

If you currently have a .com domain that is located off-shore, you will NEVER show up in the local results of Google (if you specifically limit the searches to your own country’s results only), and even when people do not limit the results to your country only, you will compete against millions of other .com domains, while your local competitor with a local domain extension will sneak right up to the top results in Google because Google gives more preference to those domains when using its local version of the search engine.

What can you do about this? I would suggest that you register a local domain and start migrating your webiste over to the new domain. You can leave your business cards and company brochures with your .com extension until you run out and have to print new ones in any case - all you need to do is ask your webhosting provider to put a forward on your .com domain to your local domain name.

It will take a while for the transition to show up in all relevant search engines and to be frank, this might not be a painless process! But you need to decide how important it is to you to show up on the first pages of the local search engines - there are other ways of marketing your website too. But if you think that you might be losing out on targeted traffic, I suggest you bite the bullet and go for it - rather sooner than later!

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Getting the Right Hosting

Apart from pricing there are a lot of features to look at when choosing a hosting company. The basic matter to be conscious of is what kind of web site you are starting to run on the server. If you’re projecting to operate a dot net or ASP website you have to select a Windows IIS answer and if you plan to run PHP or a Word Press web log, you must choose a UNIX dependent Apache Server.

After selection of the right program you have to make sure you receive unlimited bandwidth and transfer and frequently it is also for your advantage to be capable to setup unlimited email accounts. If you run dot net or ASP you must have admission to a MSSQL server and make sure the price for that is sound. Running PHP or Word Press site requires a MySQL database and naturally a PHP5 installment.

Uptime is important, 99.99 % uptime is important, no hosting company will assure you 100 % uptime. You will also need to consider the service and backup from your host to properly run your site as fast as possible, which is also essential for Google optimisation and SEO in large.

Word Press is recommended for a cheap and resilient web result and hosting your web site on a UNIX supported host running Apache and MySQL is an approved web hosting solution which is smooth to keep up without programming skills and knowledge and Word Press is also easy to optimise for search engines like Google and Bing.

Your World Wide Web hosting company is the foundation of your WWW presence and it is very important to select the correct web host from the set out. You can change host subsequently, but making proper research to retrieve a serious hosting company from the start is the strongest act, particularly if you plan to get a huge number of traffic which should be able to establish without the downtime which will take place during transference from one host to different.