The internet feels like a place where your location doesn’t matter. We’re used to seeing content & interacting with people from around the world. And no matter where you are online it feels like every site is equally close.
One concept that might surprise new website owners is that the location of your web server matters. I live in Denver Colorado and if I want to access a web server in Denver it’s going to be much faster than one in Europe, South America, or Asia.
To illustrate this let’s do some speed tests around the world. My web server is in South Carolina. On the east coast of the US. So let’s test our site with a couple of different locations to see how much it could help.
I’ll be using the KeyCDN speed test since they make it really easy to test locations.
- New York – 800 ms
- London – 1.59 s
- Bangalore – 3.12 s
- Tokyo – 3.85 s
If your server is a half continent away it could add a 1/2 second easy. If it's on the other side of the world it could add 1-2 seconds.
My advice to you is to make sure your webserver is located in the same continent as your audience – or the largest chunk of your audience.
Since I’m catering to a US audience with my site I’m very happy where I am and don’t need to change anything. If you are thinking about moving server locations first ask your host because they likely have a server location closer to your customers and it’s much easier to move between data centers than to setup a whole new hosting account.