How important is the location of a server?

[hoangvu]

I'm in the process of choosing a hosting provider and I'm always considering to choose both America and Europe based hosting companies. Its really important for my sites because it can help my site improve speed and target audience at those locations. what about you? How important is the location of a server?

 

[ulterios]

Of course it's nice to have the servers close to your target audience.

However, if you use a CDN (Content Delivery Network) along with your hosting then it really wouldn't make much difference as to where your server is located. Cloudflare and MaxCDN are a couple of the most popular. Cloudflare has a free plan as well.

 

[Adam Greer]

I'm in the process of choosing a hosting provider and I'm always considering to choose both America and Europe based hosting companies. Its really important for my sites because it can help my site improve speed and target audience at those locations. what about you? How important is the location of a server?

Hello. Location of the server is vital. If you need speed of your resource loading, you have to consider where your target audience is geographically wise and choose the closest server location. This allows to reduce ping times and latency and to enhance overall user experience.

 

[RDO Servers]

RDO Servers

I wouldn't call it vital.....

If all of your visitors are coming from 1 country, then you should consider using hosting in that country. Otherwise, it does not make a huge difference.

What DOES matter, is making sure you have a optimised site hosted on a quality network.

Assuming your using a quality provider who has a quality network, USA to EU ping times are ~100 milliseconds. Would you notice that difference?

Using a CDN would keep static requests from even reaching your server. Only the dynamic is pulled from you servers so the number of requests is minimal.

 

[laceibanet]

The location isn't all that noticeable, but a provider closer to where your users are gives them a bit of a better connection. So if your users or visitors are US based, then go for a US server, and so on for any other region. The difference isn't that noticeable for websites, it's mostly for applications or game servers where you really have to worry about server location

 

[mark-blockity]

Hey Edward,

All true, location is important and you should consider if your visitor will came from one country or region. But if you think you are global this will be tougher and you may need to select which ones will you serve faster.

There is one more place - China. China is behind firewall which will slow down your pages or even won't let your traffic come through. If you want to serve China please check amazon.cn

Regards,
Mark

 

[dedica_manager]

Well here is very controversial opinion. I stick to the fact that search engines take into account the location of the server of the country in the ranking. Of course I will not say that this is one of the decisive factors in promoting it in the regional issue, but apparently even a small share of this factor should invest in website promotion.

Incidentally, in an interview with one of Google employees said that the geographical location of the server, contrary to the belief of a number of SEO professionals, has no significant effect on the site's rank in Google search results.

 

[SenseiSteve]

If your target audience is in Asia, then Singapore might be a good choice, but there are lots of Asia optimized routes out of Los Angeles, California. Generally, location is a factor, but not always.