Do Yahoo and other search engines help with geographic targeting?

[cavemanlawyer15]

We're having a problem with a client who hosts all its web sites from one country, but has unique sites for different markets, distinguished by top level domain (TLD). So the .COM, .CO.UK, .DE, .FR etc are all hosted on an IP in one country (let's say its France).

We know that the content's hosted IP address is a major factor in personalized search. The concern is that search engines will interpret all that content as originating in France, and thus to a searcher in the USA, the content might be deemed less relevant and rank lower than a competitor who happens to host its site in the USA.

We also know that Google Webmaster Tools allows users to specify individual "geographic targets" which is basically intended to circumvent this problem. But what about Yahoo, MSN, and others... do they have their own workarounds? My research indicates No.

Any thoughts?

[Jeremy80]

To work around this, you should try to get country specific links to each domain name. So for the .co.uk try to get links from other websites hosted in the UK or that at least have a .co.uk extension. The same goes for the other countries. A website does not have to be hosted in a particular country in order to get rankings there, although it probably helps a lot.

[LocalGoogleGuru]

Here I have an idea...

throw up some pics on yahoo's flickr
geotag each pic with a different countries ip

perhaps open the pic in photoshop and saving it as something else
ie) take a .jpeg and save it as a .png

couldn't hurt

flickr is my SEO secret weapon... not sure about on your side of the pond though