Global reach
Your website lives on a real server in a real place. And where that place is matters more than you'd think.
Overview
DomainDash shows you where your site's servers are hosted on a world map, so you can see your site's global footprint at a glance. We work it out from your site's DNS records. You don't need to give us hosting access or set anything up on your end.
What the map shows
The map has two kinds of pins on it:
- Server pins show where your site's servers appear to be. If a site has more than one server in the same city, they're grouped into a single pin — hover it to see how many.
- Check origin pins show where DomainDash is running its regular checks from. These are the locations we use to measure how your site performs around the world. See regional checks for more on that.
A few things worth knowing about the pin locations:
- They're approximate. We estimate server locations from public IP address data. That's accurate at the country and city level, but we can't pinpoint the exact data centre or building.
- If you use a CDN, you'll see the CDN's location, not your origin. When your site is behind something like Cloudflare, Fastly, or CloudFront, the pin shows the CDN's edge node closest to the check, not the server where your site actually lives. This is usually a good sign: it means visitors in that area are already getting a cached copy close to home.
Why server location matters
Data moves through the internet at roughly the speed of light, along undersea fibre cables. That's fast, but not instant.
A request from London to a server in Sydney has to travel about 17,000 km each way. Even at the speed of light, that's a ~170ms round trip just for the wire, before your server has done any actual work. Add the usual overheads (connecting, securing the connection, your server thinking about the response, the response travelling back), and a distant visitor can wait half a second longer than a local one.
Rough real-world numbers to put that in perspective:
| Visitor in | Server in | Minimum round trip |
|---|---|---|
| London | London | ~10ms |
| London | New York | ~75ms |
| London | Sydney | ~270ms |
The closer your server is to your customer, the less waiting they do. It's as simple as that.
What your map is telling you
There are four common patterns. See which one looks like your map.
One pin, close to your customers
You're in a good place. Most of your visitors get a quick experience by default, and there's nothing to worry about.
One pin, a long way from your customers
Your server is far from where your visitors are. They're probably noticing the wait, especially on slower connections or mobile networks.
Measure it for yourself
Want to see how your site actually performs from where your customers are? You can add a secondary check region in your site settings, and DomainDash will start measuring from there too. See regional checks for how to set that up.
Multiple pins across different regions
You're using multiple servers, or a CDN, to serve your site from several places at once. Your site is likely already set up for global reach. Good work.
The pin shows a CDN edge
We're showing your CDN's nearest node, not your origin server. That's usually a good sign. Visitors in that area are already getting a cached copy close to home, and your real server is shielded behind the CDN.
How to improve your global reach
If your map is telling you some of your visitors are a long way from your server, there are a few things you can do about it.
Measure from more places
The first step is knowing whether the distance is causing a problem. Add a secondary check region that's closer to your customers, and you'll see their real experience side-by-side with yours.
Start with regional checks
Regional checks walks through enabling a second region and comparing the results.
Put your content closer with a CDN
A content delivery network (CDN) stores copies of your site on servers all around the world. When someone visits your site, they get served from the nearest CDN node rather than travelling all the way to your origin server. That can be the difference between a snappy site and a sluggish one for distant visitors.
Popular CDNs include Cloudflare, Fastly, AWS CloudFront, and Bunny.net. Most of them have a generous free tier and are straightforward to set up.
More regions means more insight
DomainDash's higher plans include more monitoring regions, so you can compare performance across more parts of the world and spot issues you'd otherwise miss.
Need more regions?
See choosing a plan for what's included at each tier.
Related
- Regional checks for comparing performance between two locations
- Uptime monitoring for how uptime checks work in general
- How incidents work for what happens when a check fails