Should I change to a UK host?

[ridesign]

Currently I am trying to change hosts as my old host has become super slow, currently most of my traffic is from the US and wanted to know if moving to a UK host will negatively affect my rankings?

[Bagi Zoltán]

I don't think that it would greatly affect them. Though when I moved a PR3 site it took about 2 weeks when the google reindexed. I guess it greatly depends on the PR. The ranking calculation at different geo locations mainly depends on your inlinks IMO.

[charlesgan]

if your visitor is mainly from US, then use only US host provider.
Why? because it take extra delay for US user to access your UK hosted page. If you run a ping to the server, you will see the delay is double or more.

[Seo Madrid]

Originally Posted by Bagi Zoltán

I don't think that it would greatly affect them. Though when I moved a PR3 site it took about 2 weeks when the google reindexed. I guess it greatly depends on the PR. The ranking calculation at different geo locations mainly depends on your inlinks IMO.

Sorry, I didn´t get this... I understand that if you just move your hosting but you keep your URLs Google won´t drop your site from the idex, so won´t need to reindex anything.

As a principle, you should host your site in the country where you receive your highest volume of traffic

[Bagi Zoltán]

Originally Posted by Seo Madrid

Sorry, I didn´t get this... I understand that if you just move your hosting but you keep your URLs Google won´t drop your site from the idex, so won´t need to reindex anything.

I saw that with my own eyes. Maybe it was the only site that disappeared and return to the index. I don't know.

[Seo Madrid]

In case you decide to move your host, these are the steps you should follow not to have any problem at all:
http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/moving-to-a-new-web-host/

[tdd1984]

Originally Posted by ridesign

Currently I am trying to change hosts as my old host has become super slow, currently most of my traffic is from the US and wanted to know if moving to a UK host will negatively affect my rankings?

Nope is shouldn't effect your rankings, now keep in mind though, and don't get confused if you go to like google.ca, google.co.uk, google.in, different search engines in different coutnries they rank sites very differently.

I have a friend that ranks very well for seo on the 4th page in canda, which his domain is from canada, and ranks higher in canada google then what he does in google.com, which 4th page ain't that good, but comes to tell you canada google, and usa google is somewhat different.

For the majority of the part they pretty much rank sites the same, but I think there is several different factors with search engines in different countries, now I have notice website that are very well trusted with google, or carry a strong link profile there ranking very good with ever google.

But yes you should be fine, just make sure you host your websites from unique ips, its all about uniquess

[WebGeek182]

Actually, your host location makes more of a difference than the tld extension (.com,.ca,.co.uk) because search engines geo-target their rankings based on ip location of the host. If you're desiring traffic from a certain country, host in that country.

[Johan007]

Originally Posted by tdd1984

Nope is shouldn't effect your rankings

I disagree it could hugely affect your traffic especially if much of it comes from the US via Google. Moving to a UK with a .com would mean Google (other SE localization is v.rubbish) will rank your pages less in the the US but will include your pages in the “pages from the uk” radial button and maybe more in the UK overall.

p.s Population of the USA is much greater but more competition.
p.s.s Bandwidth is also much cheaper in the US.