I am based in the UK and have two webservers, one German based (1&1) and the other is UK based (Easyspace).
I recently signed up to the UK easyspace server because it was about the same price I paid for my 1&1 server but also I wanted to see if my sites hosted on a UK server gave better results in terms of UK based traffic.
Its seems my traffic is roughly the same for both servers… however 1&1 server performance and customer service is much better than Easyspace so I was thinking about cancelling it and getting another 1&1 server.
I understand about latency issues where USA/Asia would be much slower for UK traffic but I am just wondering what your thoughts are traffic, SEO etc and if you think I should stick with a UK server or if it doesn’t matter?
Looking forward to your replies.
My main concern is losing UK based customers if the server is located outside the UK but it appears from the comments that this is probably not the case.
However, my UK server is based in Scotland, my other server is based in Germany and is actually closer to London than Scotland?
Just to compare the speed between Scotland server and Germany server:
=== Germany Based ===
=== UK Based ===
The difference is around 6ms which is not much at all.
Incidentally I just performed a ping to a USA based domain I own:
The USA timings are much quicker considering the extra distance across the Atlantic to NY and back (9am UK time so USA are asleep – will try again tonight).