I don't very often dissagree with OWG, but in my experience, a .co.uk hosted in the UK or USA perform equaly well with or without setting the location in Webmaster Tools. Google by default makes the assumtion itself until told otherwise. Since the emergence of quality good value UK hosting has been readily available, it has not been much of an issue. However when it was disproportinately expensive to host in the UK, it was a common occurence. It did only affect UK targetted .com and other non UK tld sites and as far as I know that is still the case.
I do however stand to be corrected if someone can say with authority that a recent measured test proves otherwise.
|