philicious - 9:22 am on Aug 17, 2004 (gmt 0)

This question was asked and answered way back in 2001, but someone (a competitor) flagged physical hosting location as a new hot issue in the SEO world in a meeting I was sitting in on for a client today.

We are building a site with a .jp domain, obviously targeting the Japanese market. Is there any advantage to hosting this site within Japan, or disadvantage in hosting the site elsewhere?

The rumour is that actual physical location of the server will be a MAJOR factor in regional-specific sites. True or false?