What is the best domain name purchase and hosting company in Australia?

on my journey, this is what I have discovered.

some of the major US hosters that Aussie sites rank well have no telephone support or STD numbers rather than toll free.

I have found that crazydomains have given excellent site support (when I had issues with my joomla site installation), but as you say hosting costs are ridiculous.

Seo wise many people say have a country specific extension (.com.au) and host in your own country. But I have friends with high ranking sites in Australia with dot com sites hosted in the US, they just have aussie phone numbers and mention of australia in contact pages etc on their sites, which Google seems now able to process and understand.

Hostpapa seems to have a high review by some people, and only costs $6 per mth hosting of multiple sites (if pay for three years), and I even got through on the phone (to a canadian) but they dont sell .com.au domains.

Hostgator are well known. First host pack only allows one domain, second one cost $6.36 per mth (3 yr commitment) for unlimited domain hosting (can port Domains across) but this does not have a 'private IP'. Their next plan does at another $4 per month.

Why has no one mentioned the other large player godaddy?

Do you feel that its worth going up to the hostgator business hosting pack so that all sites dont appear to be coming from the same account - isnt that what private IP does for you, so google wont as easily connect the dots of ownership and potentially downgrade PR power sent from these sites to your other sites, if that is what you do?

I guess its only another $50 a year, so do you guys mostly use crazy domain (to get an au for google seo) and host with hostgator as its the cheapest IP 'cloaking' out there? Do they have EASY and accessible installation and general phone contact or IM contact? Do they have easy one click wordpress and joomla install? It seems most warriors favour wordpress for the seo plugins? So I will have to go with the steep learning curve ..

Views?

P.s. what value do you find having a dot com dot au gives you? Is it for google ranking, or people trusting the site more if it has an au after it?

Buying a .com domain is pretty much a standard price around the globe. Buying a .com.au is a bit more expensive and you (usually) need an ABN (Australian Business Number).

Hosting on the other hand is a hole different ball game. Hosting in the US is reasonable. Hosting in Australia is madness and very expensive. There is just not the demand to create enough competition and you'll pay a LOT more to have your site hosted in Australia.

I live in Australia, have owned hundreds of domains and set up dozens of websites - not once have I ever considered hosting my site in Australia - way too expensive...and they all go home in the evening and on weekends! Life's too good here to stay back and work I suppose (jk...lol) At least with a decent US host you'll get 24 hours support.

Les Blythe - "GoDaddy for domain name purchase and Hostgator for hosting" But of course you are only talking about buying dot coms (not au's) ?

godaddy has a Sydney (02) std number to call and from my mobile its 'press 1 or 2' options did not work. A toll free number would be VERY useful.

"- if you put your websites on add on domains (NOT sub domains) in Hostgator, they all have their own unique address/ URL " Are you talking about the BUSINESS ($12 per month) option that makes it appear as if they are hosted in different places (not all on the same SSL certificate?).

Martin Luxton "we have the .com which redirects to the .com.au" which is great for your major money sites, but doubling up on expenses for secondary sites will be prohibitive.

I guess besides people maybe trusting a dot com dot au more in Australia (even if they rank the same as a straight dot com here) is that there is less competition for good URL names, and you can align australian search phrases directly to high volume Google australia search volumes, if that is what you are want to do.

So the over arching view here is to buy dot com dot au from crazy domain and host with hostgator (business hosting account) at around $12 per month over three year commitment? their other options (on cheaper hosting accounts) is to have a "Shared SSL Certificate" which I assume is bad? So that will be a $360 commitment to start with (over three years for discount)? Yes

Hi John,

not doubting that at all. I am here to learn and prosper.

What I am trying to unravel (get some good opinions on) is whether those high ranking site's PR (link power or whatever we call it) can be passed to other sites on the same hosting account.

OR MORE IMPORTANTLY if you have say ten sites on one hostgator account, and they all point at a money site (on a different IP), whether all of the secondary being on that one account (so it looks like they are owned by one person, as its all the same IP) will affect how much Google allows the PR of those bunch of secondary sites to be passed onto the money site.

I am sure that this 'network trick' is employed by a lot of people. Just that I have not heard the specifics of how much Google may downgrade the passing on of the PR from these secondary sites to the Money sites, making having those secondary sites in the first place of little value.

So I am talking about secondary sites that have value and are unique themselves, but their main purpose is to pass on PR, not just gain a high ranking themselves. If they all share one IP, how much does Google delve into that and how much will their algorithm say that someone is trying to game Google, heaven forbid, making having those sites for a rank boost of the primary site of little or no value?