IP Address: Ownership Location Versus IP Resolve

[jake372]

We are a US based ecommerce company that recently switched hosting to a Canadian owned company.  I was told we would have a US based IP address but noticed yesterday that the MOZ bar is listing my website, 1800doorbell.com as a Canadian company.

I've researched this online and what's typically stated is that your IP location needs to be in the Geo area you serve.   When I brought his up to my host they stated:

"The location being reported by many of these tools will be the one from the WHOIS. Since our corporation is registered in Canada, it will return a matching result. You can verify the location of the address by issuing a traceroute and examining the location codes at the end of the traceroute. For example, on: 96.125.180.207"

So now I am really confused.  What matters to me is how the search engines see my IP address.  Will/do they see it as a US IP address?

Below is the output from DNSstuff and thanks for any help:

This is what I received back from DNSstuff:

| ASN | 12179 |
| Name | INTERNAP-2BLK |
| Description | - Internap Network Services Corporation |
| # Peers | 11 |
| # IPv4 Origin Ranges | 32 |
| # IPv6 Origin Ranges | 2 |
| Registrar | ARIN |
| Allocation date | Apr 13, 1999 |
| Country Code | US |

|   |
| Reverse | unknown.static.dal01.cologlobal.com. |
| Reverse-verified | No |
| Origin AS | - Internap Network S... |
| Country Code | CA |
| Country | Canada |
| Region | North America |
| Population | 31592805 |
| Top-level Domain | CA |
| IPv4 Ranges | 5944 |
| IPv6 Ranges | 336 |
| Currency | Canadian Dollar |
| Currency Code | CAD |
| IP Range - Start | 96.125.176.0 |
| IP Range - End | 96.125.191.255 |
| Registrar | ARIN |
| Allocation date | May 10, 2011 |

[jake372]

Thank you for the feedback, I appreciate it.

If I were strictly trying to understand how Google, for example, sees my IP address, do they see it as a Canadian IP address even though it "Resolves" to Dallas, TX?

[gazzerman1]

There are a few key things to keep in mind when it comes to the location of your IP.

The easiest question, do you only want US traffic. If so the easiest thing to do is go into Google Webmaster Tools and change your settings http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ Click the cog on the right and select "Site Settings" then select your "Geographic target".

This was created because many users decided to go with cheap hosting offshore.

Other factors:

How old is your domain = Creation Date: 24 Sep 2001, wayback machine has indexed knowledge of your site since 2001 as well (http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://1800doorbell.com) A long term knowledge of the site by Google will not cause it to suddenly target a new location

What does your link profile look like: If a large portion of links pointing to your site are from US sites it will deliver US traffic regardless of its location

Does your content target a US market?: it seems too, however when I look at your contact us page http://www.1800doorbell.com/db800-contact.htm your contact info is an image with a US address, Google will be unable to crawl this information.

There are many factors why Google will decide what local traffic to send you based on your sites history. But the safest bet is to select it in Webmaster Tools.