Location host affects position SE's

[boxter]

I have a question about the influence of your hosting location on the position in google and other search engines.

Say you want to build a site targeting the German market. Is it better if this site is hosted in Germany or doesn't the location of your host influence your position in google at all? Will a US hosted site do as well as a Germany hosted site?

The reason I'm asking is because I remember reading an article that said your the location of your host DOES have influence when you aim for foreign markets...

Any opinions or experiences?

[manute]

google determines the server's location from its ip. and as it's relatively difficult to get a german ip for a server in the us, you will be penalized.
i tried it from the other side and had hardly any chance of listing sites on google usa with a german server.

[Wail]

The first thing Google looks at is the domain name (I'm citing Matt Cutts from SES London 2004) and then IP address.

So its much better to be www.example.de with an American IP address than www.example.com with an American IP address.

Of course, you do also need to have German language content too.