Comments on Geo-Targeting Factors

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  Joost de Valk – Ranking in different countries has different requirements. For some countries, f.i., Google cannot reliably determine server location based on IP, and some languages are so alike to Google’s algorithm that weird stuff sometimes happens (Dutch pages ranking in German results, f.i.)
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  Russell Jones – Any opportunity you have to tell Google explicitly what region for which your site is designed — do it. Make their job as easy as possible.
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  Wil Reynolds – The address associated with the registration of a domain wouldn’t make sense to have too large of an impact as this would severely hurt sites that are registered in one country yet have content for multiple countries on their site
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  Aidan Beanland – In my experience Google still relies mainly on the ccTLD, IP location of host and Webmaster Tools regional target. Secondary cues are given less importance than in other search engines.
  Language of the site can act as an automatic geo-filter, as only queries in that language would match content from that country. However, this can (and does) cause confusion when the same language is spoken in multiple countries, or the same words are used across multiple languages.
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  Kristjan Mar Haukson – Address Associated with the registration of the domain we have worked with large companies with their address given in one country but targeting another and this has not played any role that we have seen.