The mantra shouted by real estate agents seemingly the world over, ‘location, location’, doesn’t lose its meaning when looking at the web.

An obvious translation is the value of a good domain name. Simple, catchy, short. These gems of the internet are in hot demand by domainers (people who buy and sell generic internet domain names) and can fetch sizeable returns (read Masters of their Domains). But the real topic of tonight’s post is concerning search engine results and the location of your server (or TLD of your domain name).

Searching for ‘flowers’ in Google will return different results depending on your location, no matter if you selected ‘pages from Australia (insert other country here)’ or not. Granted defining the search to a country will narrow down the field much further, but the important point to note is that Google has already decided that you’re going to prefer results in your local area to have a higher preference in the general search.

What does this mean for online businesses? Your domain and server location matter.

If your primary consumer is a local Australian and your domain ends with an international extension (just .com/.net etc) and you’re hosted overseas, then chances are that Google is going to overlook you. How do you solve that? Either make sure you’re hosted locally or purchase a .com.au domain.