IP Address: Ownership Location Versus IP Resolve
-
We are a US based ecommerce company that recently switched hosting to a Canadian owned company. I was told we would have a US based IP address but noticed yesterday that the MOZ bar is listing my website, 1800doorbell.com as a Canadian company.
I've researched this online and what's typically stated is that your IP location needs to be in the Geo area you serve. When I brought his up to my host they stated:
"The location being reported by many of these tools will be the one from the WHOIS. Since our corporation is registered in Canada, it will return a matching result. You can verify the location of the address by issuing a traceroute and examining the location codes at the end of the traceroute. For example, on: 96.125.180.207"
So now I am really confused. What matters to me is how the search engines see my IP address. Will/do they see it as a US IP address?
Below is the output from DNSstuff and thanks for any help:
This is what I received back from DNSstuff:
| ASN | 12179 |
| Name | INTERNAP-2BLK |
| Description | - Internap Network Services Corporation |
| # Peers | 11 |
| # IPv4 Origin Ranges | 32 |
| # IPv6 Origin Ranges | 2 |
| Registrar | ARIN |
| Allocation date | Apr 13, 1999 |
| Country Code | US || |
| Reverse | unknown.static.dal01.cologlobal.com. |
| Reverse-verified | No |
| Origin AS | - Internap Network S... |
| Country Code | CA |
| Country | Canada |
| Region | North America |
| Population | 31592805 |
| Top-level Domain | CA |
| IPv4 Ranges | 5944 |
| IPv6 Ranges | 336 |
| Currency | Canadian Dollar |
| Currency Code | CAD |
| IP Range - Start | 96.125.176.0 |
| IP Range - End | 96.125.191.255 |
| Registrar | ARIN |
| Allocation date | May 10, 2011 | -
Thank you for the feedback, I appreciate it.
If I were strictly trying to understand how Google, for example, sees my IP address, do they see it as a Canadian IP address even though it "Resolves" to Dallas, TX?
-
There are a few key things to keep in mind when it comes to the location of your IP.
The easiest question, do you only want US traffic. If so the easiest thing to do is go into Google Webmaster Tools and change your settings http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ Click the cog on the right and select "Site Settings" then select your "Geographic target".
This was created because many users decided to go with cheap hosting offshore.
Other factors:
How old is your domain = Creation Date: 24 Sep 2001, wayback machine has indexed knowledge of your site since 2001 as well (http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://1800doorbell.com) A long term knowledge of the site by Google will not cause it to suddenly target a new location
What does your link profile look like: If a large portion of links pointing to your site are from US sites it will deliver US traffic regardless of its location
Does your content target a US market?: it seems too, however when I look at your contact us page http://www.1800doorbell.com/db800-contact.htm your contact info is an image with a US address, Google will be unable to crawl this information.
There are many factors why Google will decide what local traffic to send you based on your sites history. But the safest bet is to select it in Webmaster Tools.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Crediting a second website when I have 2 setup depending on location
Hello Moz Community! I'm a bit stuck with this one and have read a few varying answers! Basically I have an eCommerce website on a .com domain name selling to the UK and Europe currently. I have recently created a very similar selling the same products but solely to the US with a .US domain name. What is the best practice with this, will the 2 separate sites be okay left as they are, or do I need to credit the UK site from the US site as they are incredibly similar? The sites are: www.rhinox-group.com www.rhinox-group.us Thanks in advance!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | josh.sprakes0 -
I've seen and heard alot about city-specific landing pages for businesses with multiple locations, but what about city-specific landing pages for cities nearby that you aren't actually located in? Is it ok to create landing pages for nearby cities?
I asked here https://www.google.com/moderator/#7/e=adbf4 but figured out ask the Moz Community also! Is it actually best practice to create landing pages for nearby cities if you don't have an actual address there? Even if your target customers are there? For example, If I am in Miami, but have a lot of customers who come from nearby cities like Fort Lauderdale is it okay to create those LP's? I've heard this described as best practice, but I'm beginning to question whether Google sees it that way.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley2 -
Location.href vs href?
I just got off a Google Hangout with John Mueller and was left a little confused about his response to my question. If I have an internal link in a div like widgetwill it have the same SEO impact as widget John said that as you are unable to attribute a nofollow in an onclick event it would be treated as a naked link and would not pass pagerank but still be crawled. Can anyone confirm that I understood it correctly? If so should all my links that have such an onclickevent also have an html ahref in the too? Such as widget Many times it is more useful for the customer to click on any area of a large div and not just the link to get to the destination intended? Clarification on this subject would be very useful, there is nothing easily found online to confirm this. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | gazzerman10 -
Using IP to deliver different sidebar content on homepage
We have a site with a generic top level domain and we'd like to use a small portion of the homepage to cater content based on the IP of a visiting user. The content is for product dealerships around different regions/states of the US, not internationally. The idea being that someone from Seattle would see dealerships for this product near their location in Seattle. The section on the homepage is relatively small and would churn out 5 links and images according to location. The rest of the homepage would be the same for everyone, which includes links to news and reviews and fuller content. We have landing pages for regional/state content deeper in the site that don't use an IP to deliver content and also have unique URLs for the different regions/states. An example being a "Washington State Dealerships" landing page with links to all the dealerships there. We're wondering what kind of SEO impact there would be to having a section of the homepage delivering different content based on IP, and if there's anything we should do about it (or if we should be doing it all!). Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoninjaz0 -
Template Files .tpl versus .html files
We sell a large selection of Insulation Products use template files (.tpl) to collect up-to-date information from a server side database file that contains some 2,500 line items. When an HTML (.html) file is requested on the Internet, the 'example.tpl' file is accessed, the latest product and and pricing information is accessed, then presented to the viewer as 'example.html' My question: Can the use of .tpl files negatively impact Search Engine acceptance?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Collie0 -
Citation Sources for Google Places when located in Europe/Middle-East
Hi All, To get citations to back up Google Places listings for Europe or Middle-East based companies, what directories or places is it possible to have your business address, name and phone number listed? Perhaps we could compile some listings here. Unfortunately most of the articles and citation sources for Google Places point to local city directories in USA like Yelp, Citysearch etc. which we are not eligible for.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | emerald0 -
International IP redirection - help please!
Hi, We have a new client who has built a brand in the UK on a xyz.com domain. The "xyz.com" is now a brand and features on all marketing. Lots of SEO work has taken place and the UK site has good rankings and traffic. They have now expanded to the US and with offline marketing leading the way, xyz.com is the brand being pushed in the US. So with the launch of the offline marketing US IP's are now redirected to a US version of the site (subfolder) with relevant pricing and messaging. This is great for users, but with Googlebot being on a US IP it is also being redirected and the UK pages have now dropped out of the index. The solution we need would ideally have both UK and US users searching for xyz.com, but would see them land on respective static pages with correct prices. Ideally no link authority would be moved via redirection of users. We have considered the following solutions Move UK site to subfolder /uk and redirect UK ips to this subfolder (and so not googlebot) downside of this is it will massively impact the UK rankings which are the core driver of the business - also would this be deemed as illegal cloaking? natural links will always be to the xyz.com page and so longer term the US homepage will gain authority and UK homepage will be more reliant on artificial linkbuilding. Use a overlay that detects IP address and requests users to select relevant country (and cookies to redirect on second visit) this has been rejected by ecommerce team as will increase bounce rate% & we dont want users to be able to see other countries due to prduct and price differences. Use a homepage with country selection (and cookies to redirect on second visit) this has been rejected by ecommerce team as will increase bounce rate% & we dont want users to be able to see other countries due to prduct and price differences. Is there an easy solution to this problem that we're overlooking? Is there another way of legal cloaking we could use here? Many thanks in advance for any help here
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Red_Mud_Rookie0 -
Does Google Places reward unique icons for multi location businesses?
I work for a company that has over 100 physical locations. We are working to update our Google Place icon. My question is, do we get any seo benefit having a unique icon for each location, or no benefit and its better to focus on having a the best single icon possible. Note, we are going to add unique images in each place listing, this is specifically referring to the main icon shown on Google results.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | NickConfer0