If I have a site that targets the UK but I host it from a US hoster, will it affect search engine results?

Question

if so is there any way around this without changing providers?

Answer 1

The previous answers are completely wrong.

Here is a quote from Vanessa Fox, Google Product Manager, from the official Google Sitemaps blog http://sitemaps.blogspot.com/2006/07/tips-for-non-us-sites.html

"If you want your site to show up for country-restricted searches, make sure it uses a country-specific domain (such as www.example.com.br). If you use a domain that isn't country specific (such as .com), make sure that the IP address of the site is located in that country".

Notice that she says "IP address" so check that your hosting service is not using servers based in another country and using that country's IP range.

Answer 2

Google has publicly stated that the location of the server doesn't matter, what matters is the TLD. So make sure you have one ... domain.co.uk. If you don't have one currently, get one and do a 301 Redirect to the new domain and all link popularity will be passed to it.