This is not exactly about blogging. But it is very critical I was obliged to tell you about it.

As a blogger or someone who considers starting your own blog, sooner or later you are going to go out and buy your own hosting service. With the myriad of choices, it is easy to get lost.

Shopping for web hosting may take hours, if not days of research, especially if you decide to do it on your own. The result could be satisfying though.

The purpose of this blog post is to have you think again if you feel like taking shortcut to buying a web hosting package.

A discussion thread in Digital Point points out the lost in ranking by a user.

About 2-3 of weeks or so ago our server was down for about two days… We were ranked #1 and top 10 on a bunch of relevant keywords. Our PR went up in the past month or so from a 4 to a 5 on a couple of pages on our site. This Monday I noticed we dropped of the radar on most rankings but 2 or 3 main ones where we dropped from #1 to #4 and #10… Could the server being down have caused all these?

This was soon confirmed by other forum users. Although the original poster reported lost in ranking for Google, others have reported the same with MSN Search.

Saving a few bucks in web hosting is definitely not worth it.

If the lost in search engine ranking is not enough of a reason to buy a solid web hosting service, think about the lost in traffic, list subscribers and even revenue if your domain is not available for hours, if not days.

I have proven it again and again. Consider web hosting cost is an investment. Before long, the cost will be covered and you save yourself from the headache and other technical issues, which in turn save you time in doing other more important things.