Using An International, Foreign, Web Hosting Server
Foreign Visitors - Language Barriers - Country-Based Web Hosting - WHOIS
When you first get into the world of website creation the normal pattern is to buy a domain name and web hosting package and then take the next two months
or so building up its website content. This usually involves writing articles, joining forums, creating a blog, posting classified ads and whatever else
it takes to make that website famous.
After nine months or so, and anywhere up to two years, you should have enough statistical data to conclude how many visitors your website averages per
month/year and who those visitors are. At which point you may be scratching your head saying to yourself "I've done everything correctly. My website is
on page one of the major search engines and I am getting a satisfactory number of visitors buying into my product(s)/service(s).....but I want more! What
can I do next?".
The answer to that question might be to expand, just like you would expand a business in this situation. A business might expand by opening another shop
in a different town or further up the high street, but with a website you would need to host it in another country simply because if it's currently being
hosted in the UK for example you wouldn't really move it around the UK.
This is because a website that is being hosted on a UK Server (on a UK web hosting provider's computer) will automatically be classified as a UK website
by the search engines and therefore have its search engine results listed on the UK search engines (i.e. on the Google UK search engines/servers) but not
necessarily on the Australian search engines for example. So your website might be listed on page one of Google UK but no where to be seen on Google
Australia. Hence why your next step would be to make a duplicate of your website content and upload it to a foreign, international, server.
Expand Your Website Abroad
In this section I have moved my successful yoingco.com website, listed on page one of google.com and yahoo.com (and on other search engines too), over to
a Canadian Server so that I can research the advantages and disadvantages of this move. I have also set up a duplicate copy of yoingco.com and had it
hosted in The Philippines under the domain name of yoingco.ph, to see how far I get in The Philippines.
According to my statistics, and the emails I have received over the years, I know I have an audience in Canada, Australia and parts of Asia; so in this
section, over the next year, I will be exploring some of the advantages and disadvantages of having a website hosted abroad. Here are some of the main
questions I will be asking myself:
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Before completely moving your website, or just its domain name, to another country you should do your homework first.
Do Your Homework Before Hosting Abroad
Test the situation with keywords/keyphrases, product demand, website competition and so on. Today's snapshot of Google UK (pages from Web) for example has 25,000,000 search results for the keyphrase
FREE COMPUTER LESSONS whereas Google UK (pages from UK) has 1,110,000 search results; and Google Canada (pages from Canada) has 615,000 search results.
Google Australia (pages from Australia) has 277,000 search results whereas Google Russia (pages from Russia) has 16,900 search results. One thing to note
here though is language. If I type FREE COMPUTER LESSONS in russian (translated using the Yahoo BabelFish translator) I get 368,000 search results. The
same scenario with the philippines. FREE COMPUTER LESSONS gets 253,000 search results whereas LIBRENG COMPUTER LESSONS gets 258,000 search results. As you
can see; there are far more search results coming from Google UK.
The Language Barrier
One thing you have to take into account when hosting a website abroad is the language barrier. To be successful in China for example you would need to convert all your web pages into Chinese, whereas with a Canadian hosted website you might be alienating the French by having all your web pages written in English only. And hosting a website in the US means you might be alienating many different languages. So if you add these equations up, what are you going to do when someone emails you in Spanish or French?
Brown Out (Black Out)
Another consideration is the poorer countries, like The Philippines, where they are notorious for having Power (Electric) Failures; because of their Typhoon Season (very heavy winds and rain) and lack of electricity supply - Many houses have no electricity and/or rely on generators, perhaps because they cannot afford electricity or because they live in a remote part of the country (i.e. near a volcano, mountain and/or jungle). For web hosting providers, who do have electricity and can afford electricity, even they have to rely on generators some time.
Poverty / Lack Of Education
As well as Language and Electricity, Poverty and Lack Of Education are other considerations. Although The Philippines for example is not a poor country
(it just has a corrupt government who steals from the local people and keeps the rich people, rich) you have to consider Brown Out, Poverty and other
factors.
Even though The Philippines has a population of approximately 99 Million people a lot of those people only use their internet connection to play online
computer games and to chit-chat to friends/relatives, usually because they are poor and unemployed due to lack of education and having too many children
(because of boredom). In the Philippines you have to pay your own way (medical-wise and education-wise) so a lot of those people might not be able to
afford your product(s)/service(s) with whatever money they have to spare, especially if they are in Pound Sterling (GBP).
On the flip side of this doom and gloom third-world country scenario you have millionaires (even by GBP standards). The Philippines has plenty of
them - In The Philippines you are either rich or poor but never half-way. Many people there have a parent working in the UK for example, sending home
money every week/month. This same scenario is true of certain African countries and other Asian countries. So you might just hit a winner with your
product(s)/service(s).
The Exchange Rate
Even if the above considerations do not put you off, which they shouldn't do because they are only pointing out your options, you also have to consider The Exchange Rate. Meaning, with a country like The Philippines you would probably need to sell ten times more products in relation to 1 product in the UK.
Fig 1.0 Use a website like www.xe.com to view a currency's latest exchange rate
Their currency is the Philippines Pesos which today is 67.61 Pesos (PHP) to 1 Pound (GBP). So with the average worker getting 4,000 pesos (£60) per month, even if they have 1,000 pesos (£14.78) to spend I do not think it will be on your expensive product! Remember though, there are millions and parents sending money; so you could take a risk and host in a country like The Philippines.
Cheaper Web Hosting Packages
It's not all doom and gloom. One of the advantages to hosting your website abroad is that web hosting packages are usually cheaper. In The Philippines for example I paid £13 for a decent, basic plan, web hosting package that would of cost me at least £25 in the UK. Their business package, which contains two thirds more web space and bandwidth, is only £45 - I would have to pay at least £70, if not £100+, in the UK for the same package.
With the yoingco.ph domain name I paid £23 for it, simply because I wanted everything to be "The Philippines" (for this research) and wanted the web hosting provider (www.web.com.ph) to get some commission (if any), but could have paid only 500 pesos (£7.50) for a .com domain name. I also had the option of redirecting one of my existing domain names (its nameservers) to point to my philippines (basic plan) web space and therefore cut my costs further.
Check The Location Of Their Servers
Before ordering any web hosting package, from your own country or from abroad, you need to ask the web hosting provider where their servers are located;
and more importantly, where your particular web space (web hosting package) will be located (hosted).
It is very common for a web hosting provider to be based in Australia or Canada for example whereby they use US based servers (web space) for their web
hosting packages, probably to cut their costs, hence why you get some of these providers promoting "Some providers claim to be based in Canada but...."
and "All of our servers are based in Canada.....".
WHOIS Privacy Protection
Another thing to ask about is their WHOIS feature. Do they support WHOIS Privacy Protection? The service (organisation) that hides your name and address details from the general public. In the case of The Philippines for example they do not support WHOIS in the traditional way but do have a means of hiding your name and address details.
Fig 1.1 The www.dot.ph control panel allows you to modify your .ph domain name WHOIS details
With registries such as Nominet, who regulate .uk domain name registrations (i.e. yoingco.co.uk), their WHOIS policy is that businesses must have their
WHOIS details made available to the general public whereas private individuals can opt-out of these requirements (hide their WHOIS details).
If you are uncertain about a particular country's WHOIS policy you should search IANA,
Norid or
Perl Services for example
to get the website address for a particular registry and then visit that registry's website for information about their WHOIS policy. You could always
email them questions of course.
The Search Engines / Servers And IP Addresses
To clarify the above said; A search engine determines the location (i.e. the country) of a server (web hosting provider's computer) by its IP Address,
which in this example is the ip address of the server hosting (storing) the yoingco.ph website content. This means if the yoingco.ph website content is
hosted (stored) on a US based server which has a US based ip address, as opposed to a Canadian based ip address for example, it will be classed as a US
website and therefore be listed on the US search engines.
If the yoingco.ph website content was hosted on a US based server but with a Canadian ip address it would be classed as a Canadian website. This is because
the server is just a web space (hard drive) at the end of the day that can have virtually any, country based, ip address assigned to it.
On top of this scenario the domain name TLD you assign (redirect/point) to a website (web space) makes no difference to the ip address. So having yoingco.ph
for example assigned (redirected/pointed) to a website (web space) located on a US based server, with a US based ip address, will still classify that
yoingco.ph website as a US website. The .ph will make no difference. The search engines will not say "That is a website in The Philippines".
Taking this a step further. If you make a duplicate copy of your US website content and store it (have it hosted) on a Russian based server for example,
with a Russian ip address, and then redirect your US domain name to that Russian web space (server) you would be losing your US based audience. Why?
Because the US domain name has now been assigned (pointed/redirected) to a Russian based server, and therefore the website (web space) it points to is
now classed as Russian in terms of location (not language).
More to the point; the US based website content now has no domain name pointing to it. Meaning, it would need a new domain name assigned to it in order for
it to become available again. This is what I did with yoingco.com - I now have it hosted in Canada and therefore had to give my UK website content the
yoingco.co.uk domain name. This means although the Canadian website has an instant audience from yoingco.com, yoingco.co.uk will now need heavy promotion
to get it producing UK search engine results. Luckily I have one year to do so!
One Year Of Research And Promotion
So in a nutshell; Over the next one year I need to make yoingco.com a little more famous in Canada, build up (from scratch) yoingco.co.uk for the UK market and then build up (from scratch) yoingco.ph for The Philippines market. Hopefully, I will then see what's what statistics-wise and funding-wise.
The Results - One Year Later
Results will be shown in September 2011.