With this in mind you would expect our answer to be: host with whoever gives you the best value for money. In fact, this is not the answer. Google and the other major search engines all have country based versions of their search engines and will normally offer their visitors the ability to see results delivered for sites just in that country. The question is, ?How do they decide where the results are coming from??

This is a 2 phase process, which in many cases can be totally inaccurate.

1). If your domain name has one of the many country specific extensions, they conclude that your site must be related to that country, and where it is hosted is totally irrelevant. What we mean by this is a .co.uk domain could be hosted in Canada but will still show up as a UK result.

2). If your domain name has one of the generic domain extensions, .com .net .org .edu, the location of your site is based on where you host your site. So if the IP address that it returns shows as a Canadian location, your site is regarded as Canadian.

In both of these cases it is easy to see that your site can turn up in the wrong results. If you have a generic based domain, your host should be in the country where you want your business to be found. If your site is geographically based, that would be the place to host it. If you are offering services to a worldwide market, the US would be as good as any as they offer a huge share of the Internet traffic. Once you decide the country, look at the services that you need and go with a host that provides them, and always try and take a look at other sites that they host for speed comparisons, etc. You don't want to lose your visitors because your host delivers your site at a snails pace.