Before building this directory we pulled search volume, difficulty and cost per click for the hosting space across several markets, then sampled the results pages themselves. A few findings changed what got built.
European demand is weighted differently
The obvious assumption is that European search looks like American search with smaller numbers. It does not.
Virtual servers take 2.13 times the share of hosting search in Europe that they take in the United States. Self-hosted platforms, the category of software you install on a server you rent yourself, take 2.97 times the share. These are proportions rather than absolute volumes, so they are not an artefact of market size.
That maps onto something visible in European developer communities: the common setup is an inexpensive virtual server from a European operator with a self-hosted deployment platform on top of it, rather than a managed platform that bills per application. The directory carries a whole category for those self-hosted platforms because of this, and virtual servers lead the category ordering rather than sitting in alphabetical position.
Brand search dominates, which changes what to build
European hosting search is heavily brand-led. People search for a provider by name far more than they search for a category and browse.
The consequence for a directory is that provider pages matter more than category pages, which inverts the usual advice. So provider pages here are the one place the minimal-copy rule is suspended: they carry full prose, real specifications, honest limitations and the sovereignty detail, because they are the page most readers will actually land on.
One of the most valuable terms is shrinking
The highest cost per click in this space sits around managed WordPress hosting, which is why so many affiliate sites are built around it.
It is also declining. The head term is down 44 percent year on year. Nearby terms are falling too: one large email provider's alternatives query is down 46 percent, and a common language-specific hosting query is down 43 percent.
A directory optimised for revenue per click would lead with managed WordPress. This one lists it, and orders it low, because sponsorship rather than affiliate commission is the intended revenue model and sponsorship scales with audience rather than with the value of a single click. Building the site around a category that is shrinking would be building for last year.
Answer boxes are on almost every result
AI Overviews appeared on 93 percent of the United States results pages we sampled, and between 83 and 92 percent across European markets. That is not a trend to prepare for. It is the current state of the page.
It has a specific design consequence. What gets cited by an answer box is a crisp, attributable fact, not a narrative. A marked-up table of regions and free tiers is more citable than three paragraphs describing the same thing.
That is why every programmatic page here opens with a short extractable answer of 40 to 60 words and then hands over to structured data. The minimal-copy rule and the answer box requirement point the same way, which is convenient, and it is why they are the same rule in the design system rather than two competing ones.
What we did not conclude
The sample is a point in time. Whether answer box presence stays at these levels is unknown, and the year on year declines are one year of data rather than a trend line.
The research is in the repository alongside the code, including the raw exports, so the page set can be regenerated when the numbers are pulled again. A directory whose structure came from measurements should be able to show its measurements.