What Google Really Thinks About Hosting: Insights from Google Webmaster Guidelines

Jun 16, 2025

Does web hosting affect Google rankings? Well, the short answer is yes but you don't know that way it does. Although Google has not published any list of the best web hosting providers, it has always shared tips through its Search Console guidelines, Core Web Vital updates and Search Central blog posts on what is important as far as hosting is concerned. Check out what Google thinks about hosting and how it can help your website performance including rankings in 2025. 

1. Never Compromise on Page Speed 

As per Google Search Central guidelines, Website speed is a crucial ranking factor for both mobile and desktop searches. Hosting would always have a direct impact on your site speed. A slow server will lead to a slow loading site, even if everything else is optimized. 

Google is looking for TTFB, Fast time to First Byte, quick server response time and the optimized Core web vitals. 

Opt for a hosting provider with SSD servers and caching tools such as LiteSpeed and NGINX. 

2. Server Location Directly Affects Web Crawl Efficiency 

Googlebot crawls globally, but your hosting server location influences your website’s regional and latency SEO. According to Google, Server location influences how a site appears in geo-targeted results. When targeting Pakistani users, opt for a .pk domain with a local hosting provider to enhance speed and regional relevance. 

3. 99.9% or More Uptime = Better Crawling & Indexing 

Google wants websites that are crawlable and available. Frequent downtime or hosting outage blocks Googlebot from accessing your web pages. What Google wants is a consistent server uptime 99.9% or higher, fast DNS resolution and minimum 5xx server errors. 

If Google is unable to access and crawl your site on a frequent basis, it will lead to traffic and SERP ranking loss. Always opt for hostings with the highest uptimes. 

4. HTTPS is Compulsory 

HTTPS has become a ranking signal since 2014 and if your host doesn’t offer SSL certificates, then you are falling behind. It is a ranking signal because it helps to avoid cyberattacks. Look for a hosting provider offering an easy to integrate SSL or a free SSL certificate with hosting. 

5. Bad Neighbors on Shared Hosting are Harmful

Shared hosting is a place for multiple sites. If the sites residing on it are spam or contain malicious content then that also negatively affects your website. Avoid malware infected neighbors, cloaked or frequent server-side redirected sites on a host as well as shared IPs having spammy sites. 

If you are working with a sensitive site and have the budget, it is ideal to opt for a dedicated IP address or even use managed VPS hosting provider. 

6. Hosting also Affects Crawl Budget  

Large websites with thousands of URLs are impacted by crawl budget (pages that Google would crawl in a session). 

Hosting impacts this if it has a slow server response time, frequent timeouts and a bad uptime. Use a host which has high-speed connections and server caching to help Googlebot in  a fast way. 

7. Hosting Security Leading to Trust Signals 

Google values security as part of overall site trustworthiness.Google loves security over everything else. In case your host is hacked frequently, or has spam sites it can negatively affect its position in the search results. Select a host with malware scanning and auto-backups. 

8. Fast Hosting For Core Web Vitals 

Core Web Vitals mainly depend on hosting. Factors such as 

LCP (Largest Contentful Paint) is affected by server speed 

FID (First Input Delay) is impacted by server response time 
CLS (Cumulative Layout Shift) is tied to quick resource loading. 

Use Cloudflare CDN, Managed VPS hosting or LiteSpeed for fast rendering. 

Wrapping Up 

Google doesn't recommend particular hosting names, but it values the ones offering fast loading speed, minimum downtime, Secure HTTPS, crawl-friendly servers and a clean neighborhood. 

A website with good content is essential but a poor hosting leads it down. 

Google’s Favorite Hosting Checklist 

Here’s a summary of Google’s preferences when it comes to hosting: 

Requirement	Why?	Hosting Must-Haves
Fast Load Speeds	Improves UX, SEO	SSD, caching, low TTFB
HTTPS/SSL	Ranking & Trust Signal	Free SSL or Let's Encrypt
99.9%+ Uptime	Reliable crawling	Monitored servers, DDoS protection
Server Location	Improves geo-targeting	Local data centers
Strong Security	Trust & index safety	Firewall, malware scanning
Crawl-Friendly Setup	Better indexing	Fast DNS, robots.txt, clean sitemap