Web Hosting

Is your UK hosting really in the UK?

As Search Engine Optimisers (SEOs) will tell you the geographic location of your site can affect your ranking in local search results. That being the case the general rule of thumb is the sites wishing to rank for UK visitors should be located in the UK and sites wishing to rank for US visitors should be located in the US.

However there are hosting companies around that although they are UK hosting companies have their servers located in say the US, they do this as US hosting can come at a lower cost to them.

So how do you know where your site will be hosted before parting with your cash?

You need to ask the hosting company if their servers that you will be placed on are really located in the country of your choice, you can even ask them for an example IP address for one of their servers.

If you have an IP then a free service such as http://software77.net/cgi-bin/ip-country/geo-ip.pl can tell you where the IP address is located, simply enter the provided IP address in the “Enter Octets or Numeric” box on the right and click Submit.

If you already have a web site hosted somewhere and need to check where it is located then if you don’t already have the IP address you can visit http://www.domaintools.com/ and search on your domain name. This will not only provide the IP of the server but also the geographic location of the server.

At TOLRA we maintain servers in both the UK and US in order to meet our customers geographic distribution requirements, more information on our plans can be found at http://www.tolranet.co.uk/webhosting.html

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