why's everyone after UK hosting?

[staystream]

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just wondering, because it's relatively expensive over here and there are often better options available in the US.

the extra 100ms US-UK latency is hardly a factor and on shared hosting it's moot anyway.

[accelerator]

... because if you are building a UK targetted site, you will rank better on Google.co.uk.

Rgds

[Entrepreneur]

... because if you are building a UK targetted site, you will rank better on Google.co.uk.

Rgds

Not necessarily true at all.

[nordicpeacock]

There is plenty of things you can do to get tell search engines that you are UK focused despite having a US host. Even a lot of "UK" hosts have their data centres outside of the UK.

+ With the pound so low the "savings" from the US providers are getting less.

[staystream]

may be helpful:

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Where in the world is your site?

[accelerator]

Not necessarily true at all.

... all other factors being equal.

Plus, we are supporting the UK technology industry.

Rgds

[fizzbird]

the extra 100ms US-UK latency is hardly a factor and on shared hosting it's moot anyway.

Have a browse through Stumble in the UK and you start to wonder how fast the speed of light really is?

[Andrew Starr]

Have a browse through Stumble in the UK and you start to wonder how fast the speed of light really is?

Its not really about the speed of light.
Its all the various bits of tech that get in the way and slow it down.

[fizzbird]

Its not really about the speed of light.
Its all the various bits of tech that get in the way and slow it down.

I appreciate this, I agree the speed of light theory is a simplification

This aside, if paying an extra few quid a month keeps business in the UK then all well and good. I've had cause to contact my host this evening and received a detailed reply in less than 5 minutes from someone who knows who I am. Enough said

[Jack Russell]

just wondering, because it's relatively expensive over here and there are often better options available in the US.

the extra 100ms US-UK latency is hardly a factor and on shared hosting it's moot anyway.

Who says its expensive? You can check our hosting plans and let me know

UK Hosting is generally for UK based websites with UK traffic.

[staystream]

> UK Hosting is generally for UK based websites with UK traffic.

Well, latency is the only technical reason I can think of, and it's a bit of an edge case; and while price might be bordering on "competitive" with the collapse of the pound, it's rarely as competitively priced here -- especially if you are comparing apples with apples.

should advocate UK providers, absolutely -- there just seemed to be a disproportionate amount of "UK version of X" threads, perhaps driven by myths/misunderstandings about Google. Server location may have been a factor once but I find it hard to believe Google would discriminate against the largest and most popular datacentres when they can get the geographic context much more accurately via the site itself (its domain, content, web master tools) -- especially as cloud computing becomes more popular and things become more distributed. It would really distort their search results to do that.

But yeah, lots of valid reasons to host in the UK as well.

[vanilla]

I have to say that I've always used US hosting (MediaTemple or Hostican). Most UK companies will only let you host more than 5 domains if you have a reseller account which can cost £100 or more.

Having looked at eukhost.com (thanks Jack Russell) they do seem to have some very reasonable packages.

[Aspirin]

... because if you are building a UK targetted site, you will rank better on Google.co.uk.

Rgds

Not necessarily true at all.

Unless there is proof that this is not the case I will always host my sites in the UK as I have read multiple times that having your website hosted in the country you are targeting helps. Like alot of other theorys connected to SEO, until Google comes out and says otherwise its worth trying anything.

[rob.co.uk]

I cant find the site in a quick google but one of the hosting companies had a simple iframe setup with two pages inside - one on their usa network and one on the uk network.

Easy enough to see the difference when in place like that

[jonsimmonds]

For me who buys hosting by the server, rather than the shared host, hosting in the USA is(was-untlll the exchange rate droped) cheaper than the UK, and in my opinion more secure. I think that there are less restrictions on IP allocation state-side

I thought the whole server location thing wasn't that important, since you can choose your target audience in googles webmaster tools?