msn.co.uk thinks we are not UK based

[saturn]

Hi,

I manage a UK based website www.biglink.biz (IP address 83.138.128.199), and for some reason msn.co.uk does not recognise our website as being UK based.

The site has been indexed OK, but when you tick the 'Only from United Kindom' box, the site disappears completely from the listings.

Has anybody experienced this problem, and if so, any ideas on how to fix it ?

Interestingly google.co.uk does not have this problem.

Any advice/guidance would be gratefully received.

Kind regards

Kam

[Robster]

I have the same problem with one of my sites and how its listed on google. I think it depends on a number of factors, eg if you have a .co.uk domain it will probably assume your are UK but if you have an international domain search engines may use other methods to determine your location. Possible factors could be country related keywords in your site and which Regional section your appear on ODP and other directories.

[temi]

Kam,
Welcome to UK webmaster world, Rob is stop on. Other ways to get MSN to recognise your site as UK site includes adding UK to you text as often as possible, it could also be beneficial of you site is hosted on a UK ip address.

The other question you asked me about search engine promotion, you may want to contact another member : Old Welsh Guy , his company specialise in search engine marketing

Thanks

[OldWelshGuy]

The top three all behave differently with regard geo targeting. Google does it on IP physical address (where the ownership of the IP resolves). Yahoo and MSN treat it differently, using mainly backlinks etc and the domain extension. The rule of thumb is though that if your targetting the UK, then get a UK domain, and host it in the UK. anything else is playing with fire IMO.

My advice to you is to put your physical address in your navigation footer, include EVERYTHING about your address, including town, county, country and uk. eg, 235 high street, great bircham, Kings Lynn, East Anglia, England UK. NR11 1aa (made up address lol). Next you need to get into some uk directories and get those pages spidered. Try kelly search (as a construction related site you will get good traffic from there anyhow). There are also a few other UK directories like thomweb etc .

You are absolutely right though in as much as they are not doing what they normally do in scoring non UK domains down, they are actually removing you altogether. I have fired off an email to MSN (shown them the reply I got from Google) and asked them to confirm their methods. My guess is that within a week I will get a reply, and will post it here.

[saturn]

Thanks for your feedback guys. I am beginning to think that the problem is related to our IP address.

We initially had a problem with google.co.uk but not msn.co.uk. We suspected that it was to do with the IP address, and therefore moved the website onto a new UK IP address - This temporarily fixed the problem on bothe search engines.

However. when msn recently introduced their latest software, we disappeared off the listings. When I check the 'location' of our IP address, some software correctly recognises that the IP address is located in the UK, but other software cannot locate the IP address at all, and I am wondering if the new msn software is in the latter category.

I wonder if other factors such as location of the name servers have any bearing !!

[OldWelshGuy]

<added>

here is the reply I received from Google a while back.

From: help@google.com [mailto:help@google.com]
> Sent: 06 May 2004 01:49
> To: Umbrella-Consultancy
> Subject: Re: [#9471289] Google UK Inclusion
>
>
> Hi James,
>
> Thank you for your note. Searches that are restricted to a
> country domain
> should only return sites that are physically hosted in that country,
> regardless of the extension. If you would like your site or
> others in the
> UK to be returned in a 'UK sites only' search, we recommend
> that you have
> the site hosted in that country. This should make it more
> likely that your
> site will return in a search for pages from that country.
>
> If your site is currently hosted in the correct country and
> you feel that
> Google is incorrectly detecting your site's location, please visit
> http://services.google.com/georeport/ to report the error.
> In your report,
> please use the 'Comments' section to let us know the IP
> address of your
> website, as well as where the website is physically located.
>
> We hope this response is helpful to you.
>
> Regards,
> The Google Team
------------------------------------------------
So there you go

[pinyo]

That's cool. I just tested this and it seems that Google and MSN are more strict on the definition of "Site in UK".

A UK only search on Yahoo! does show my site which is heavily linked to and from UK sites. And, my site is no where to be seen on "UK only search" for Google and MSN.

[saturn]

pinyo - also worth checking the geolocation of your IP address.

I get different results from different tools. I suspect that this is why google sees my site as UK based and and msn doesn't. Tools I have used:

- http://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm (cannot locate the country)
- http://www.dnsreport.com/ (correctly locates country).

Any thoughts ??

[pinyo]

The second site is really cool. I bookmarked it. There are so much information.