Help! I need to change my ISP - any advice?

[ourinns]

The domain has a factor too.

However, the location of the hosting is a very significant factor. For instance, in early 2006 I upgraded the ourinns.org sites to America from 1and1 'cos it was a whole lot cheaper to get the facilities that I needed over there. The hits dropped about 90% over the course of the following couple of months (this being in the run-up to the Summer too ie when hits should have been rising).

I bit the bullet at that point and forked out the £10 or so a month to move the hosting back to 1and1 (uk variety as before) and within about two weeks the hits went up roughly x10. This is with no changes to the sites whatsoever and indeed the domains remain registered in the same places too ie only the hosting location changed.

If 'yall cast your minds back even further to (2004) I had mascamps.com hosted in the US and raised the issue on LMH as to why my hits went up x10 in 2005. Now that was part of a whole revamp of the site but one key thing was a move to 1and1 UK and in hindsight that appears to have made the difference. And, yes, the ownsite bookings rose by a corresponding amount (sadly from a low base!).

Just lately I was wondering what would happen if I moved from 1and1 "UK" (actually in Germany) to a real UK host and started doing that a few months ago. The hits on the sites moved jumped between 50-100% within the following two weeks, again with no other changes to the sites.

Marcus made a similar move a year or two back and picked up an extra 50% or so more hits if memory serves. Actually, that's what prompted my experiments in hosting location.

All the above domains are .com or .org.

All being well, you'll all be able to watch this process in action soon as I'll be moving the listings sites to the London based server (from 1and1 UK) once we get the Summer rush out of the way. Any of you listed on the sites should see clickthroughs etc. rising as we move into the Winter when ordinarily they'd fall.

If you're hosted in the US at the moment, it's very easy to try this out. You can get UK hosting for £20/year so it's not a big outlay. All that's required is to reload your site on a UK host and change the nameservers to point to that. If it doesn't work for you, you're down £20 but if it does...

[Lesblancs]

LV -28°C on Sunday

It is 28c and rising now - Just not used to this Heeeat

Bobby, with a bit of TC.

[ttp]

However, the location of the hosting is a very significant factor.

Can you explain why ?

Visitors to web sites come from somewhere & you need to analyze where they are coming from before you can say the location matters.

If you're hosted in the US at the moment, it's very easy to try this out. You can get UK hosting for £20/year so it's not a big outlay. All that's required is to reload your site on a UK host and change the nameservers to point to that. If it doesn't work for you, you're down £20 but if it does...

I'm willing to be proven wrong, so if anyone wants to host their site on our server (located in Docklands) I will do it free for 6 months & then £20 a year thereafter.

[Normandy Cow]

I too am perplexed. Surely visitors find you by searching on google or msn or suchlike?

If you are on the first couple of pages of the search engines, then how can it make a difference whether your site is hosted in the UK or the US?

[mpprh]

Hi

I've been experimenting with my website for 5 years.

the google algorithm takes into account many different factors.

I had a dotcom on a French host. I was consistently No2 to a dotinfo website on google.co.uk. However, I was No1 with the same dotinfo site at No2 on google.com. So the choice of .fr .co.uk .com .info does matter.

The dotinfo site had a revamp and moved to No1 on both google.co.uk and google.com.

I think the impact of dotinfo is less significant than content and other factors.

The google results also vary if you change the screen language. In all languages on google.com, I appear in the top three. If you then change the screen settings to French, but continue with the all language settings, the results are completely different. So, you need to consider where your customers are located, their language, and which search engine they use.

I changed from France to UK hosting. It improved my position on google.com by one position (3 to 2). I'm not sure if this was due to the location change because I overtook wikipedia and their supremacy in the search engine rankings seems to be weakening generally.

The change from French to UK hosting has not changed the number of visitors significantly. The growth pattern remains similar.

The change providing the greatest increase in growth was from a free URL, to a .com URL incorporating my main keyword. So maybe cheateaubillanddoris.com is less effective than luberon-villa-rental.com

I make a note of changes and keep screen prints so that I can monitor position :
http://www.the-languedoc-page.com/images/google22.gif

Someone asked Why does it matter ? The answer is that if your own website is positioned at the top of google for your customer's keywords - it can be more effective than paid listings.

Peter

[ttp]

I changed from France to UK hosting. It improved my position on google.com by one position (3 to 2). I'm not sure if this was due to the location change

How Search engine work is a very closely guarded secret but I understand that Google 'weigh' the reliability of the host & it could be that the UK host is seen by Google as more reliable.

[ttp]

mascamps,

As you haven't answer my question, I thought I would ask some people more knowledgeable than I to look at your message & let me have their comments.

Most of the comments were just one word but someone said:

The fact that he talks about "hits" shows that he doesn't
really understand about web traffic - perhaps you should
explain to him that hits is an anagram.

I suspect his UK host runs a watchdog/monitoring service,
and it's this hitting his site which is increasing the
traffic.

Or maybe the server in the UK is configured to log all
traffic, but the US server was only configured to log
pages (.htm, .html, .php, .asp, etc.) - that would almost
certainly account for the tenfold increase he's talking
about.

Any comments ?

[Hells Bells]

OK, one for the techies then. My site is hosted by 1and1, and I will have to pay for another 6 months soon. Supposing I decide to change web host, will I be still able to upload my exisiting site to the new host, as it is created using a 1and1 template and software.

[Mountain Goat]

'....will I be still able to upload my exisiting site to the new host, as it is created using a 1and1 template and software....?'

No. Even if it was technically possible 1&1 would have cause for a legitimate squeak of complaint regarding (their) copyright of template. Any behind-the-scenes stuff like contact form scripts etc. would also suffer.

MG

[Hells Bells]

OK, then I will be sticking where I am already at then, as I can't afford to have the calendar redone again. It would be a new customisation, so too expensive.

[Mountain Goat]

I wouldn't have thought the customisation of the calendar would be a hassle nor expensive, especially if you kept to a similar style.

You could always give dateblocker.com a go...... (thread creep - anyone tried it yet?).

Not sure whether this thread is on ISPs (providing broadband etc.) or Web Hosts. Although some ISPs provide web hosting it's probably not a brilliant strategy as one's site might not be as mobile as one would like.

MG

[Hells Bells]

Dateblocker doesn't do what my existing calendar does though.I haven't tried it again after it deleted all my bookings from several listing sites.
I have already asked about the calendar, and even a colour change on the website (I changed to green for the summer) involved a recustomisation. Once I have the time to design a new site, I will pay the money obviously, but it isn't a short term option at the moment.

This is the reply I got

Hi Helen - I'm afraid it's a bit more complicated than just changing the
colour as your Website uses images
throughout. In other words, I would have to download all the new
imagery, upload it to the booking system,
then amend the code to address the new images and layout throughout the
booking system's files (approx
12 files + related stylesheets). In other words, it comprises a fresh
customising.

[Mountain Goat]

Mmm, I don't really understand that reply at all. It needs thinking about - what have images got to do with the booking system? You're not using customised logos or anything. Was that response to your query about customising the booking system? Or rebuilding the complete site?

Probably best to wait for a true guru and would be interested in their comments.

MG

[Hells Bells]

MG, I don't really understand either. I could just go back to the normal online calendar of course. Certainly for just the colour change (some of the page order would have been different), I would have thought the only alteration to the style sheet would have been..........the colour, and would not have needed a great deal of work.

[ourinns]

Nick: hadn't noticed this thread moving along, hence lack of earlier reply.

I don't know why the increase was so drastic but I can assure everyone that it was very real and kicked in very fast. By every measure that I made at the time, the hits, visitors, and adsense all went up 10 fold. I'm aware that stats produced by different ISPs aren't necessarily consistent but when adsense goes up 10 fold too (along with other non-ISP related stats) that shows that the jump in traffic was very real.

I know that Marcus experienced a similar increase though in his case it was around 50-100%. Why his jump was smaller I don't know but perhaps it's related to something different in our style of writing websites.

I have recently moved a number of sites from 1and1 UK to a London based host and the increase is between 50 and 100%.

The 10 fold increase applied equally to all the sites which I moved from the US to 1and1 and there were no changes made to the sites or their promotion over the period of the move. The sites concerned are my little family of listings sites and our own property site which would have a mainly European audience rather than an American audience.

As I say, if you're currently hosted in America and have a property in Europe, try it out and see for yourself. It'll only cost you about £20 and a few hours.