US-based hosting or local country?

Question

I run an Aussie flight search site. It's currently hosted with a cheap US hosting company (hostgator) I chose when I set it up because, well, cheap.What I'm wondering, as my hosting subscription is coming up for renewal:1 - does having a server based in Australia make much difference to speed? 2 - does Google penalise slower sites? 3 - does Google take into account that if you have a .au domain, it should speed test for Aussies?Basically, trying to get advice on whether it's worth moving hosts - the few website I've found discussing it try hard to push you in a particular host's direction, and then you see their affiliate code, which makes it harder to validate :/

thatha7777 · Accepted Answer

If I were you, I'd start with Cloudflare + Argo, and setting some good caching rules, and see if that helps at all.Yes, in general, your server should be as close to your customers . . . but if you're calling into a lot of backend services to do flight searches, you may also want your server to be closer to your backend services (maybe they're in the US).

Ayesh · Answer

Go with a good US based host. Your current provider is absolutely one of the worst in the industry. This is my personal opinion of course, but their support, hardware, and networking have gone awful. Look for cloud VPS providers. Even their cheapest $5 can easily outperform shared hosts.Second, choosing an AU provider might help to bring the the TCP round trip time, but in most cases, it is your application itself that is the bottleneck. You can test the pin times yourself, and I am think providers in US West coast and Singapore can give a reasonable sub 150ms ping time.