Server proximity and Cloudflare

[chainazo]

Hi, I have a site with server in my country and a good ping of 12, without Cloudflare.
The issue is that I would like to use Cloudflare (free) to be able to serve more efficiently.
When I load everything with cloudflare the ping becomes 158, with a server 5000 miles away from my country.
As for the measurements (lighthouse, pingdom, gtmetrix, etc) in all cases the results with cloudflare are much better (in almost all the items).
But I don't know for the SEO of a local business (where all my customers come from my area) what would be better, should I use Clouflare or not?
Thanks

[robzilla]

As for the measurements (lighthouse, pingdom, gtmetrix, etc) in all cases the results with cloudflare are much better (in almost all the items).

They probably don't run tests from your country, so as soon as you introduce a CDN (that has servers in or very near your country), of course you're likely to see improvements from those test locations.

When I load everything with cloudflare the ping becomes 158, with a server 5000 miles away from my country.

This shouldn't happen. What country is it? Cloudflare probably has edge servers nearby that should increase latency only marginally.

But I don't know for the SEO of a local business (where all my customers come from my area) what would be better, should I use Clouflare or not?

Probably not unless you fix that latency issue, which is not normal. Most of the performance enhancements offered by Cloudflare can also be implemented manually on your server. If you can't or don't want to do that, Cloudflare can be an easy fix for some performance issues. But if that's negated by the increased latency, you may be better off without.

In short, when you've set up Cloudflare and ping your domain, you shouldn't get 158ms result unless something is wrong (improper configuration, strange routing, etc).

[robzilla]

so as soon as you introduce a CDN (that has servers in or very near your country)

Err, I meant: that has servers in or very near the country where the test servers are (the ones used by Pingdom, GTmetric, etc. to load your site).

[Dimitri]

If your server is in the same country as your target audience, cloudflare will not really help, especially, if your site is serving dynamic content.

[chainazo]

I have problems quoting with this browser (vivaldi) so I'll answer this way:

robzilla: I'm in Argentina and the nearest CF server is in Brazil and (in theory) serves from there, although as I was seeing now it really serves from Miami, so it's even further away.

Dimitri: although I don't have dynamic content, that's what I thought then, to privilege ping over test measurements.

Thanks both for your answers

[not2easy]

Hi chainazo and welcome to WebmasterWorld [webmasterworld.com]

I have problems quoting with this browser (vivaldi) so I'll answer this way:

To see text formatting tools, you should be able to click "Preview" (next to the "Submit" button) and find formatting tools. More helpful information at that Welcome link ;)

[robzilla]

I'm in Argentina and the nearest CF server is in Brazil and (in theory) serves from there, although as I was seeing now it really serves from Miami, so it's even further away.

There are 44 edge servers in SA, four of them in Argentina, that one would expect to connect to before Miami. Some of them are being re-routed at the moment, according to the status page, but even then Miami is a long way off. Could be a routing issue between your ISP and Cloudflare, you could ask them about that.

For SEO purposes, location of server doesn't really matter, but it can have a performance impact. Real User Monitoring (RUM) is a good way to test if Cloudflare is beneficial or not; you can use the Site Speed reports in Google Analytics, for example. Don't rely only on your own experience.

[tangor]

Also test with others with different devices, ISPs, etc to see what their results are and take that into consideration as well.

For some cloudflare is a good thing, for others, not so much.

[chainazo]

Hey that's a lot of good information for someone just starting out, I'll do the tests you told me about.

Thanks to all