Thread: Data center location of Server Matters

Local search is becoming popular day by day; it is often said that search engines give higher importance to the websites hosted on local servers. Therefore, to do well in local search engines, go with a local host who has their data centre in your country. If you are from UK, look for web hosting UK only. thus it is highly recommended to have website hosted in same country you are targeting.

That really depends on your website. If your website is targeted at local people then yes it's better to get local hosting.

It's not about the location either, it's about the server response time (so faster server = better. Also if it's closer then it will be faster).

Oh and you can target your site to a certain geo location through webmaster tools (in google at least)

Originally Posted by tsdesigns

Oh and you can target your site to a certain geo location through webmaster tools (in google at least)

Hosting companies that use GeoIP can also help with that on the server side. But yes, for locally targeted sites local hosting is best. Keep in mind, that some states in the U.S. like New Jersey have major POPs (points of presence) that are very powerful and get good response times all over the world. That's why my dedicated server is with a host in New Jersey with 11 different Internet providers servicing one data center. They use smart routing so data finds the shortest path. In other words, one powerful datacenter can service users from a lot of different countries efficiently.

For local websites, then yes, it matters.

But for general audience websites, it doesn't matter much.

Plus better quality bandwidth mitigates many latency issues

I think the location doesn't really matter.Things that matter is the quality of service and hosting solution you choose.