February 1, 2008 – (HOSTSEARCH.COM) – Australian search engine marketing company Vertical Leap (http://www.vertical-leap.com.au) suggested recently that two-thirds of Australian web hosts are not search engine friendly. The company found that “two out of three web hosting companies did not offer the features required to help businesses gain the top spots on internet search engines”.
"Australian businesses don't realize that the web hosting provider they select can have a negative impact on their search engine rankings," explained Cameron Winslow, Managing Director of Vertical Leap.
According to the company, the key problem arises from many Australian web hosts actually reselling hosting packages from companies in the USA. Regional versions of key search engines – such as google.com.au, msn.com.au, au.yahoo.com – prefer websites that are physically located in Australia and this is reflected in search results. Hosting with resellers with servers in the US can therefore be harmful to businesses that rely on good search engine performance.
Vertical Leap notes a series of measures that can be taken for search engine optimization. One measure is "URL rewriting" – reducing complicated dynamically generated URLs to simple URLs that can be read by search engines. Linux web servers have built-in URL rewriting capability while Windows servers do not.
The company reviewed thirty five top Australian-based web hosting companies to assess their level of "search engine friendliness" with URL rewriting capability one consideration alongside physical location, platform, and server performance. The results were compiled into a report – a "Top 10" list available on the Vertical Leap website.
"With so many providers and the obvious impact they can make to a company's online marketing efforts, we hope this list will be a useful resource for anyone considering their hosting options," said Winslow.
