Content Delivery Network and SEO Impact

[jebernier]

Anyone have experience using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) like CloudFlare? Did you see any negative or positive SEO impact?

[EditorialGuy]

Clay More: Maybe you're a victim of selective vision? You seem to have forgotten Netmeg and EditorialGuy (me), who have been posting here for quite a while.

Fact is, a lot of large and small businesses use CDNs. CloudFlare, for example, is used by more than two million Web sites, but it certainly isn't the only Content Delivery Network. CDNs have gone from being services for corporate megasites to services that any site owner can afford. Whether you might benefit from a CDN is something only you can decide, but it's naive to assume that everyone who does use a CDN is a clueless spendthrift who's trying to con you.

[brotherhood of LAN]

There are lots of CDN providers and some are better known than others,

I think for the purposes of the thread (and forum) we don't need to focus on one particular provider, which clay_more pointed out.

[SmallP]

@Clay_More, I don't post much because it's not really in my nature to post in forums, but I scan the regular emails I get from webmasterworld and if I see something that I think I can contribute to, I click through. I felt I could contribute to this thread.

Yes, I gave Cloudflare a rave review. It's the only CDN I have used so I have no experience of others to contribute. Using it has made a HUGE difference to my site, which was previously plagued by server overload during busy periods but also gets visitors from all over the world (to answer @aristotle's question in passing). I therefore felt it was worth chiming in here. If you choose to read that as suspicious in some way, or that my opinion has no relevance, feel free.

[aristotle]

Clay_More
Thanks for your reply. I really didn't think anything was suspicious, but was only suggesting that some people might be buying a service that they don't need. But I can see now how some of the posts might look suspicious to you, especially when people say things like "best money I've ever spent." And forget the poor guy who felt left out -- that wasn't your fault

[deeper]

Some people may be jumping into this without having a good understanding of what's involved. I don't use a CDN, and doubt that I ever will, if for no other reason than that I would give up some control over my sites' performances to another company in addition to the host. I like to have as much control as I can.

Another problem is that using a CDN adds another layer of complexity, hence more opportunities for something to go wrong. I like to keep things simple. In this case there's less chance to be hurt by someone else's mistakes.

My sites are already very fast because of the way I design and code them. Any improvement in loading speed from a shorter geographic distance would be a minor benefit at best.

My advice is to make sure you understand how it works before you jump into this.

Completely agree.

It's just worth doing it IMHO in special cases. I remember JM from Google saying at least two times, that a direct "ranking factor" regarding loading time does not mean what webmaster often hope: any linear or proportional ranking improvements assigned to mseconds ect. Not 100% sure, but I think he said, that only VERY slow sites may notice better ranking after speeding up.

[Clay_More]

EditorialGuy,

Perhaps re-read the thread. CDNs have their place, which I do utilize.
I don't have any idea who your post is directed to, but it certainly isn't me.

[Dymero]

I for one am glad for the commentary. I haven't yet used a CDN but have casually looked at CloudFlare. If for nothing else, I'd get it for the up time factor in case the hosting server goes down, which does happen occasionally.

As some people have said, it may be able to help with the speed of connecting to the site, which is important to Google, so can perhaps have a small impact on SEO. Of course, don't get a CDN in place of optimizing your code or selecting a decent host.

[Broadway]

While reading this thread, I noticed that no one has mentioned Google's Page Speed Service.

Isn't this an equivalent product? Why doesn't it seem to be popular?

[netmeg]

PageSpeed Service is in a limited field trial, and is not currently accepting new signups.

I don't know anyone who's actually using it.

[cciegeek]

alexa showed that our site loads faster than others after we moved to cloudfront. so there was positive seo effect I would say. the site is definitely faster with a cdn. we are currently evaluating alternatives to reduce the cost. might worth for you to check <snip>

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 9:15 pm (utc) on Apr 17, 2015]
[edit reason] removed link per forum charter [/edit]

[rish3]

You're getting responses that are all over the map because "CDN" means different things in practice.

For informational sites, with an international audience, a CDN can handle almost every request faster than you could do on a single host. The content is closer to the end user, cached, and served from a host optimized by people that know what they are doing. It's a terrific fit.

Outside of that, however, the benefits of a CDN are more granular. For example, with a forum where most people are logged in, you can't really serve cached content. You can serve up css, images, etc, via the CDN, and that has benefit, but it also adds complexity, especially when you change anything that's cached. I have seen, more than once, big CDN hosted sites with mismatched css and javascript (due to caching), resulting in a bad situation...like an "add to cart" button that won't function.

Or, for example, if you're running an ecom site that only sells within a single country...the benefits of a CDN are even smaller. If you have a decent host within that country, "bringing the content closer" to the end user doesn't help enough to be noticed. And, caching html might be an issue (product stock levels, for example). You can, of course, cache css, images, etc, assuming the added complexity doesn't outweigh whatever gain you get.

Also, some of the benefits of a CDN can be replicated locally. You can easily create a second domain for static content and serve with a cache (like varnish) yourself.

Anyhow, all that to say that a CDN can be a good solution, but it's not a panacea.

[EditorialGuy]

For informational sites, with an international audience, a CDN can handle almost every request faster than you could do on a single host. The content is closer to the end user, cached, and served from a host optimized by people that know what they are doing. It's a terrific fit.

Yep, that's why it works so well for us. And because the CDN (in our case, CloudFlare} caches much of the content that normally would be dished up by the originating server, server bandwidth requirements are reduced and we're able to avoid jumping to the next level of hosting as our traffic grows. The money we save on hosting helps to pay for the CDN, which makes the decision to use a CDN even more of a no-brainer.

[Xpat]

I run a forum site so I can't fully utilise CDN. However, I set up a subdomain (https://cdn.example.com) and serve up all static file via that and it works well. My static pages are blinding fast now, although they were already fast by virtue of being on a very lightweight template I built myself, but now they come from CDN, blink and you'll miss it, consistently sub-200ms from anywhere in the world.

My audience is global, and I need every one of them from any country, so anything I can do to speed things up is welcome. I'm still thinking about ways to speed up the forum though, that suffers greatly from latency in distant countries. Back in the day I used to host it from my office, I sure miss how fast it was then! (from my perspective). I did mull over the possibilities of setting up a mirrored database in my office with a constantly updating link between that and the server in Singapore, but it's presently beyond my technical skills.

To the OP, I noticed no difference, good or bad, in ranking or traffic. My site went fully HTTPS even before Google's announcement on that matter. I use my own certificates, but Cloudflare's free cert on the CDN.