The best. is it always the best?

[chainazo]

At least on my continent (South America) the Litespeed (LS) server never achieves first positions to any topic, on google organic result. I have done up to 1500 random searches over several days, and LS never ranks first organically on anything.. 1500 searches isnt whole the web, i agree.

Doing mostly informational searches: sea turtles, how big a basketball field is, what a bacillus is, etc. From a one thousand five hundred random searches --> Zero first positions LS.

It is true that LS is newer than apache and nginx (and less used)...I also know that the factors to position a website are MANY, but I did 1500 searches that is a lot of opportunities for LS to come out first as an organic result at least ONE time...1500 opportunities!.

There is a "chance" that:
Does everyone who uses LS make bad content?
Do everyone who uses LS have bad backlinks?
Does everyone who uses LS have bad EEAT?
Do none of them have authority over their topic?

Could it be that in this region LS cannot exploit that higher technical quality over other servers?...there are even graphs on the web that show that LS is 8 times faster than Apache and 6 times faster than nginx.
I'm not saying it isn't...but for SEO, at least in my region it isn't.

Does LS result in first organic positions in your country?

Should I change server?...it's kind of frustrating knowing that no matter what I do I'll never get to first place.

[RedBar]

Litespeed - I wonder how many others who have read this post went off to their favourite search engine to find out what is "Litespeed" ? I was surprised to learn from Wikipedia:

LiteSpeed Web Server (LSWS) is proprietary web server software. It is the 4th most popular web server, estimated to be used by 10% of websites as of July 2021.

Oh well, one learns something new every day.

[not2easy]

I would check youur sites' CWV (core web vitals) to see whether speed or delays are an issue. Of course, the only way to see whether a different server setup might make a difference would be to try a different server type. If you have a trusted friend on a different host/server setup you could ask the for a temporary subdirectory test.

[chainazo]

I would check youur sites' CWV (core web vitals) to see whether speed or delays are an issue. Of course, the only way to see whether a different server setup might make a difference would be to try a different server type. If you have a trusted friend on a different host/server setup you could ask the for a temporary subdirectory test.

Yes, I compared it with another site that I have in Apache and when doing the "usual tests" (pagespeed, gtmetrix, webpagetest, pingdom, etc.), LS gives me slightly better results and in other cases much better. But always better LS (and much more using its caching plugin).

That's why I said that maybe LS has better numbers and that technically it is even better than the other servers, but I don't know why it doesn't achieve first positions.

[tangor]

The server is not going to give you "firsts", the content does. Incude geolocation, length and trust in domain, niche, interest, and a whole host of other issues as to whether your content is seen, or even ranks on page one.

[chainazo]

I totally agree with you tangor, that's why I said in a message above, that "coincidentally" everyone who uses LS: they don't make good content, they don't have EEAT, etc, because they are never the first (at least in my 1500 searches)...or G doesn't like LS...

[phranque]

the first two rules of SEO are:
1 - it depends
2 - correlation is not causation

[chainazo]

2 - correlation is not causation

I agree with you. But in 1500 searches people achieved first positions with WP, Drupal, Joomla, pure HTML and CSS, with and without Cloudflare, with and without plugins... but no first position with LS ((I pay special attention because LS is the server I have, if I used Perfmatters I would look to see if 1 positions are achieved with or without it).

These are the data that I, without being an SEO professional, can disaggregate. This is what I see, I'm not saying that because they use LS, I'm saying that for X reason never in 1500 times, LS achieved a 1 (in my region).
I say like an observer who always walks down a street: here I never see dogs walking...I don't know why dogs don't walk there, I just say that I never see dogs.

Is a strong server for the "firsts" in the US? (I know are so much factors not only server). Because in my region the hostings offer the "low plans" with Apache/Nginx and the premium plans with LS (in US a2hosting do the same for example). And many national and international hostings offer LS as if it were "the big new thing."

For a long time I have been with the philosophy of "do better, in time G will reward you", but it's been almost a year and nothing ever happens.

All this doubt is because I have purchased a 2-year plan with LS (much cheaper for 2 years, and I am trapped in LS and cannot "exit") and I don't know if all the effort I make (improve my texts, improve my eeat, etc) is in vain because they will never rate me 1 for having LS.

Sorry if I write too much, but I've been dealing with this issue for a long time, and perhaps it's best to change hosting even if I lose money. But first I want to consult it with people who know. Thank you.

[tangor]

I simply doubt that what type of server software you use can be part of the ranking process. It is a delivery system, and if it is working properly, that's all it does: deliver content.

[chainazo]

I simply doubt that what type of server software you use can be part of the ranking process. It is a delivery system, and if it is working properly, that's all it does: deliver content.

Good, but then because, for example, in its premium "Turbo" plans, a2hosting offers as one of its improvements greater speed, offering it in the LS combo.
Or those graphs where they show us the "overwhelming" greater speed of LS over the other servers.
And finally, if a server only has to deliver the content, why in 1500 searches could it never have been in position 1? (If it's one more server, it could hit and miss like everyone else, but this server "all misses" in position 1).

[explorador]

chainazo, I'll share with you something absolutely unrelated (if you want to see it that way), or totally related if you want to see the potential.

Years ago I noticed my advertising earnings going down a bit, and it made sense considering the traffic. Then, after having some issues with my then hosting provider, decided to switch to a different company. Surprisingly, my earnings went up, and so did the traffic, I thought "how weird, perhaps the old server was failing?". This repeated several times over the course of my now 26 years in this world of the WWW. I won't tell you it happened 10 out of 10 times, but it sure happened more than 60% of times. I don't remember where, but someone else on a forum described the same scenario.

In the described case, it's possible that the traffic was affected by speed issues, I didn't see any failures, and speed reports said everything was ok, super fast. It's also possible that my websites were moved to a range of IPs that were not visible to all my potential visitors, perhaps blocked? There are diff types of hosting services, some are literally great and you pay for it, and some aren't that great; some, specially in the shared hosting (just describing some of the cases I experienced) move old customers to worse servers... Anyway, I remember 2 big hosting companies that were great! and you could see in the support forums how server let's say... "mars" did ok, but "jupiter and saturn" always experienced constant issues, you literally would see people saying "please migrate my webs to Venus, after a hosting maintenance I was moved to Saturn and this is hell. This means, not all the servers at the same hosting provider behave the same.

I didn't solve your problem, just shared with you things you may notice over the years that qualify as "affecting factors".

But same as everyone else here, it's content what's going to rank you regardless of how many searches you try. The thing is, today things have become more difficult to spot, specially with geolocation, your search results may not even be the same on a diff country.

Now, considering what you describe, LS being the issue, that keeps you tied there? what keeps you from moving to a diff server and technology? regardless of how much you paid, if this is affecting your traffic and earnings, you will continue to loose money if you don't change your websites.