Are there benefits to using a NZ Website hosting company ?

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MurrayM

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#941730 27-Nov-2013 13:47

mattwnz: Also I was told by a web developer that having a NZ site on NZ based servers can improve SEO. I don't really know why a NZ business would host overseas these days, unless their market is offshore.

Yeah, I've heard the SEO argument before too. Something about Google taking into account where your hosting is located in order to bring up better results when people search for sites from a specific country.

Ragnor

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#941732 27-Nov-2013 13:48

mattwnz: Also I was told by a web developer that having a NZ site on NZ based servers can improve SEO. I don't really know why a NZ business would host overseas these days, unless their market is offshore.

Google doesn't care much where your servers are located only if it's responsive to users (google analytics and search crawling measures response times).

You should use NZ hosting if you have a local audience and overseas hosting if you have an overseas audience.

If you have both you should use both and/or cloud/cdn type services.

xero.com uses Rackspace in the US and international CDN's.

allblacks.com uses Windows Azure now for international visitors and local for local visitors.

billbennett

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#941743 27-Nov-2013 14:00

Ragnor:
1080p:

Loading faster is a hilarious argument given that the average user will never notice the difference in loading speeds.

Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google have all done extensive research on how latency affects sales/bounce rates/etc.

Speed does matter.

If the audience is NZ based, host in NZ or use a CDN.

Agree. Image download speed is noticeable. Text not at all.

Bill Bennett www.billbennett.co.nz @billbennettnz

insane

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#941745 27-Nov-2013 14:03

Don't forget about maintenance windows. Nothing like having your overseas hosting provider doing routine scheduled maintenance right in the middle of your NZ business day.

billbennett

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#941749 27-Nov-2013 14:10

insane: Don't forget about maintenance windows. Nothing like having your overseas hosting provider doing routine scheduled maintenance right in the middle of your NZ business day.

Yes, I had a free hosting account from an Australian service provider looking to pick up extra business in NZ. Found

a) Support is many degrees of magnitude worst than I've ever encountered with an NZ host and I've seen some bad ones here.

b) The service is often down just as my NZ users are waking up and checking for news etc.

c) There are strange brown-outs that seem out of sync with NZ rhythms. I put this down to Australian domestic transport issues, but I could be wrong.

Bill Bennett www.billbennett.co.nz @billbennettnz

mattwnz

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#941799 27-Nov-2013 15:31

Ragnor:
mattwnz: Also I was told by a web developer that having a NZ site on NZ based servers can improve SEO. I don't really know why a NZ business would host overseas these days, unless their market is offshore.

Google doesn't care much where your servers are located only if it's responsive to users (google analytics and search crawling measures response times).

You should use NZ hosting if you have a local audience and overseas hosting if you have an overseas audience.

If you have both you should use both and/or cloud/cdn type services.

xero.com uses Rackspace in the US and international CDN's.

allblacks.com uses Windows Azure now for international visitors and local for local visitors.

Perhaps google doesn't care, although if you are using .com rather than a .nz I could see it as having problems detecting that it is a NZ website if hosted overseas. However other search engines may have problems, as they aren't as sophisticated as goodle. CDNs are important but I don't think many shared hosts uses CDNs, probably due to teh high cost. Usually you would signup to a CDN service for a website. Wordpress has plugins that would with plugins such as total cache, which you can use with cdns.

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Zeon

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#941808 27-Nov-2013 15:36

Xero is pretty slow, probably their database design/load rather than hosting location though

Speedtest 2019-10-14

Ragnor

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#941875 27-Nov-2013 18:49

mattwnz:

Perhaps google doesn't care, although if you are using .com rather than a .nz I could see it as having problems detecting that it is a NZ website if hosted overseas. However other search engines may have problems, as they aren't as sophisticated as goodle. CDNs are important but I don't think many shared hosts uses CDNs, probably due to teh high cost. Usually you would signup to a CDN service for a website. Wordpress has plugins that would with plugins such as total cache, which you can use with cdns.

The country top level domain is used in search result geotargeting but you can also override this in web master tools for both Google (and Bing too).

There are a few different ways you can CDN'ify a site on a shared web host, eg cloudflare, use azure or s3 for static resources (css, js, imgs) etc.

1080p

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#945778 4-Dec-2013 23:41

myfullflavour:
1080p: No. International companies (by in large) provide support on par or better than companies in New Zealand for a much smaller price.

Loading faster is a hilarious argument given that the average user will never notice the difference in loading speeds. Also consider that a large number of Telecom/Vodafone traffic might end up randomly going to the US/Australia and back again anyway due to peering politics.

I disagree.

1) The under $10 / month are typically poor at support. They promise 24/7 phone support but when you go to use it, you sit in long queues and deal with L1 techs who have no idea. Most of these hosts outsource their support to India for peanuts. Nothing like a good local company who can actually *help*.

2) There is a speed difference. Example is a customer who has a flash video on their site. When it was with dreamhost, 100-150K downloads of the file was a pretty typical experience. Now that the site is local, it downloads for the end-user at near wire speed.

3) Uploading lots of smaller files to an NZ or AU-based host is significantly faster than to the US, just on latency savings.

I host a couple of dozen sites with DreamHost and have had precisely the opposite actual experience. Support is phenomenal even given my different time zone, everyone I have ever spoken to (regardless of location) has been expert and able to diagnose and solve problems quickly.

Speed differences are not noticeable 99% of the time. Flash video/images/etc... all come down at line speed (tested from at least three independent ISPs here) and the point is moot when the two largest ISPs ship their traffic overseas regardless.

Again with the file upload/download. If the majority of your customers are visiting your site via the US or Australia then what does it matter that you're locally hosted? I simply assume local web hosts haven't got peering deals with Telecom/Vodafone. I could be entirely wrong, of course, but my limited testing with NZ hosts has proved that to be true.

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