Hosting Foreign Language Sites

[thisbevos]

Hi,

 

I already have two sites hosted with you and I think you guys really rock! I have a question though regarding some foreign language sites I will be making soon for some Dutch companies. These sites will be all in Dutch and I would like to host them with you as you have the best prices and features that I cannot find with Dutch hosting companies (unless you pay sky-high prices). But I have a question on how this affects search engine results with local Dutch search engines, specifically Google.nl. They have an option to search for "sites from The Netherlands only". My guess is that most Dutch users will use this option when looking for services within The Netherlands. But does that mean "sites written in the Dutch language", "sites with an .nl" extension or does that mean "sites that are from The Netherlands because they are hosted by Dutch web hosting companies so they must be Dutch"? I have sent an e-mail to Google asking them but who knows when and if they'll answer. I had a similar problem earlier with an Italian site and I then opted for Italian webhosting as I wasn't sure. However, I would MUCH RATHER use you're simpy much better and cheaper?

 

Does anyone know or have any sensible ideas about this?

[TCH-Bruce]

Welcome to the forums thisbevos

 

Sorry I do not know the answer but I would expect anything with a .nl extension to be returned regardless of where the site is actually hosted.

 

Maybe someone else has more knowledge on this and will respond.

[TCH-Andy]

Welcome to the forums thisbevos

 

When Google tries to determine whether your site is appropriate for a country-specific search results, it will firstly examine the TLD of your domain name. For example if you have a site called mysite.co.nl, then you will appear when a searcher queries for local pages from nl only.

 

So as long as you have a .nl you should be safe

 

If it's just a .com domain, google will look at the location of the company owning the IP address you are on. This means you will also get a lot of UK answers, because several of the main UK ISP headquarters are over in the Netherlands.

 

Sites written in the Dutch language is a separate option for searching.

 

 

In summary, if you have a .nl domain name, you should be included in the Netherlands only pages, even if hosted in the US.

[TCH-Thomas]

Welcome to the forum, thisbevos.