Hosting in Canada

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Hosting in Canada

will this affect my US performance?

Tonearm

10:57 pm on Apr 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

I'm considering moving my site to SevenL.net because they support Gentoo Linux and their virtual dedicated server plans look good. They (and their servers) are located in Toronto, Canada though. My business currently only ships within the US. Would it be a bad idea to use a Canadian server?

- Grant

TheDoctor

10:59 pm on Apr 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

Why does it matter where your server is? I've yet to use a server located in the same country as I'm in, and currently use one for my main site that's located in a different continent.

Symbios

11:03 pm on Apr 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

It can make a difference ie;

Host a .com domain in the USA when the site is targeted at a UK audience and you may find that the site does not do quite as well on gdotcodotuk, host a .co.uk in the USA and its not a problem. I have sites hosted in the USA on .com domains and they do ok but maybe they would do better hosted the UK.

TheDoctor

11:59 pm on Apr 9, 2004 (gmt 0)

It's perfectly possible to have a .co.uk site hosted on a server in the USA. I have, for example, a site that sounds like a US one (ie no country code) hosted in Germany - and I live in London.

If you're registering a domain through a host they might have difficulty dealing with a name from a "foreign" country, but if you've got your name and are merely transferring it to a new host then there should be no problem.

vkaryl

1:12 am on Apr 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

I can't think that WHERE a server array for site hosting actually physically resides has anything to do with where/whether the business ships etc. The net isn't an actual "place", after all; mostly it's a bit-bucket. Whether your hosting "space" lives in Canada, the US, or Timbuktoo hasn't ANY relevance in terms of how your site will rank, or how your widgets will sell. Or whether it's better to ship FedEx Ground or UPS Ground.... or any one of a million other variables like credit card acceptance, paypal ditto, etc etc ad infinitum ad nauseum.

What DOES have relevance is what your host provides as far as usability, functionality, space, options, speed, uptime, and "perks" - which catchall varies of course, according to what you're looking for.

I went from a local (to me) extremely expensive US host to a highly NON-local extremely affordable Canadian host - and the only thing I've seen that's changed enough to measure is the actual speed of the servers - these are WAY faster than the old ones. (Okay - the fee structure is obvious by the fact that it costs less too, but ANYONE would see that, right?) Oh - I get way more fun things to play with too: php, mysql, apache, perl, ssh, mailing list, etc. The local guy I WAS with didn't let me use any of that because it was a "security risk".... *sigh*

The Contractor

2:09 am on Apr 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

Recently moved to a server in Canada from USA and was worried about the same thing. Sites did "not" take a hit in regular Google, but of course now come up and bring traffic from Google.ca when "pages from Canada" is selected.

TheDoctor

9:05 am on Apr 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

Contractor, did you have a .ca domain name? Or does Google check what it thinks is the physical location of the host?

The Contractor

12:59 pm on Apr 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

Contractor, did you have a .ca domain name?

Nope, strictly IP based.

TheDoctor

1:04 pm on Apr 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

Nope, strictly IP based.

Interesting. This is not how I thought things worked. And it seems to me to go against the notion of a World-Wide Web.

I wonder what the reason for this is. Anyone know?

Symbios

1:48 pm on Apr 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

Geo targetting I'd guess.

The Contractor

2:09 pm on Apr 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

<<geo targeting>>

There was a thread in the supporters forum about this. I experienced this lately by doing a single word search for "school". I had an AdWords ad show up for a school in my locality while the person I was on the phone with (2000 miles away) at the time had no Adwords/Sponsored listings. The only way Google could do this is by my cable modem ISP and/or my IP. I do not allow cookies from Google, and not running the toolbar.

Leosghost

2:16 pm on Apr 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

I translate and interface in English for a French company run by a friend of mine who hosts around 16,000 French companies including some .fr on US and Canadian servers ...never had any side effects except 75% lower overheads than if we did it in France ..:))

Everything shows up just the same ...corse that might be cos the Quebecois speak ( sort of ) French ...

Only downside is the poutine in yer logs!

Tonearm

5:40 pm on Apr 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

You guys bring up a good point with the possibility of a search engine listing you differently based on the physical location of your server. I hadn't even thought of that. I just meant from a performance standpoint. Since I only do business in the US, I should be trying to optimize my server's performance for US users. Would US users experience decreased performance by moving the server from the US to Canada?

- Grant

The Contractor

6:59 pm on Apr 10, 2004 (gmt 0)

Would US users experience decreased performance by moving the server from the US to Canada?

No, server performance is going to be based on the datacenter (pipes/connections), server config, and of course how many other sites and/or traffic on the particular server. The servers we moved to seem much quicker than when hosted at a very well known datacenter. Best way to check is ping the server and ask if you can download a few big files.. Your results will always vary somewhat depending on the path your location takes to the server.

bill

2:25 am on Apr 11, 2004 (gmt 0)

GoogleGuy commented on this issue a year or so back. He said that if you are targeting a local market either local hosting or a local domain name extension was sufficient to indicate that your site was relevant to that market.

Tonearm

3:04 pm on Apr 11, 2004 (gmt 0)

Alright, thanks a lot guys!

- Grant

okephoto

3:45 am on Apr 13, 2004 (gmt 0)

Many of my sites are Canadian content but my servers are in the US. In many ways this kills me in Canada as anyone searching Google.ca and asking for pages from Canada do not see my sites in their results. Searching Google.ca returns the same results as Google.com. Google determines what pages are from Canada by IP address, not content. Interestingly, if I put Google.com as my default home page it generally automatically redirects to Google.ca, most likely a due to my providers Canadian IP.

We have a few sites where we have 2 slightly different sites (to avoid duplication problems), one on our dedicated server in the US and another hosted in Canada. This gets us around the potential problems.

Tonearm

6:06 pm on Apr 13, 2004 (gmt 0)

okephoto -

It sounds like we're in the same situation but reversed. By the same logic, wouldn't I get "killed in the US"?

okephoto

10:52 pm on Apr 13, 2004 (gmt 0)

I really doubt it. From up here in Canada, Google.com doesn't have a function to search in the US only. I was in Seattle last week and didn't notice this on Google, has anyone seen a "search pages from US" section down there?

What amazes me is how many Canadians actually search for Canadian pages only, not realizing that they are blocking out 98% of what Google has to offer. I didn't discover this until a few of my clients were complaining about their sites not turning up on Google where they were doing well on my searches.

I error on doing well in the US as this is a large part of my business. Looking forward to more comments on this thread.