We all know that today there is a crazy competition between the hosting companies.
They all declare that they have so many happy clients.
Currently, the main way that a serious webmaster and blogger take is simply to search Google for reviews about hosting companies.
Then take the time to read reviews about 5-6 companies and finally chose one.
The problem is that many of these reviews are FAKE! They were made by the hosting people to begin with.
I myself purchased a hosting plan from a company that seems to be reliable and with many "happy customers", only after the payment I realized that I made a great mistake: the servers are overloaded and really slow.
Now, to move all my scripts, web applications and files might be a complicated task! A few days ago I installed an SEO extension for my Chrome browser.
While playing with this cool toy, I realized that my hosting company has a relatively poor Google rank! Also, the alexa rank was poor comparing to other hosting companies! On the bottom line, the hosting reviews are important, but it is highly recommended to also check their Google rank and their alexa rank.
This is objective information, one that some host companies would prefer that you never knew about...
There are several free Google Chrome extensions for viewing the Google Page Rank and Alexa Page Rank of every website that you visit.
These free extensions can be found on the official Google Extensions page.
Good Luck!