Effects fo Server Downtime on google rankings

Hey,

We all know that if your server is down a lot and frequently then google really doesn't like it.
Has anyone got first hand experience of this and or sources to that they could share to say how important server uptime is in terms of SEO

I have been doing SEO fro a website and the server up/down time is pretty bad, I would like to be able to argue the case with some solid facts.

Cheers!

I had lost ranking for several of my sites just because of down time... I had hosting with hostgator (seohosting) and had frequent down time... Even after repeated tickets they simply ignored it or said there is no problem with server... I had very good experience with them and I was using their server from last few years so I didn't want to move out... I kept server for some times in hope of getting problem solved but it never worked out...

After 1 month+ when I started seeing my sites getting dropped out of ranking, I bought dedicated server... It took some time but my sites got back in ranking better then earlier...

So from my experience it's very important that sites are live... You can also find numerous resources related to it online...

To give more context we are talking around 6 incidents (that I know of) in the last 2 months of between 1-5 hours each time.

My understanding is that google frowns upon this as its bad for user experience but also it drains google server resources as they try to crawl a site that doesnt exist and as a result you receive a penalty for this.

Could anyone provide any more input / links to sources etc ?
Thanks shall be given.
Cheers!

The source from official Big G webmaster blog,ther you go:

hxxp: //googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/04/using-site-speed-in-web-search-ranking.html

my website is under construction but still my keyword is on no1.