Does Azure / AWS hosting affect Google UK rankings?

[petehall]

I am considering moving my UK housed web server to a VS with either Windows Azure or Amazon Web Services.

I know the Amazon EU servers are based in Ireland (are Azure's?) and wanted to know if anyone has experienced any ranking issues with .com domain names on either Azure or AWS hosting services?

Of course I will probably move a single site as a test to be sure anyway, but if anyone has any experience of this I would really apreciate your input.

Thanks in advance.

[robzilla]

Azure's EU servers are in Dublin (North Europe) and Amsterdam (West Europe). As for your rankings, it should not make a difference whether you host your site in Ireland or the UK, I just wouldn't recommend hosting it in the US if your audience is mostly from the UK. Latency-wise, UK-based hosting would still be your best bet, but the difference with Ireland is tiny. I'm sure Google understands that sometimes it's better, easier or cheaper to host in a neighboring country.

If the UK if your target audience, try to make sure you have plenty of other signals that point this out.

[petehall]

Thank you robzilla. I am still having second thoughts about this.

[robzilla]

What are the main reasons you're looking at Azure and AWS as alternatives to your UK-housed web server?

[petehall]

The company I use to house my server has been bought out and the service level has dropped significantly from a very efficient, personalised service. Now I'm just a number.

So I may as well be with a larger company such as Amazon and reduce my costs.

To give you an idea I'm currently paying £200 per month for 300GB data transfer and this is around £18 with Azure.

[petehall]

That and I am looking to go virtual anyway as I do not wish to pay for infrastructure costs e.g. a new server once it's out of warranty (around 12 months time).

[robzilla]

That's crazy. Compare that to a VPS at Linode: the 768, for example, which includes 300 GB of data transfer, costs less than 20 pounds/month, and you still get (absolutely stellar) support, and they have a datacenter in London. Not sure what specs you need, but it's worth having a look (if you haven't already).

[petehall]

Thanks robzilla I will have a look!

Edit: I'm Windows Server based not Linux, so I don't think this will be of any use to me.

[petehall]

Has anyone set-up Azure North Europe with a UK ranking site yet? I created a VS at the weekend.... ok, I suppose I'll have to be the guinea pig!