Can the geo-targeting webmaster tool hurt ranking in other countries?

[member22]

I don't manage to rank in the us for a keyword i am ranked in EU and someone just told me not to use the geo targetting tool in the webmaster tool from google because it could be the reason of me not ranking in the usa ?
anyone heard about this ?

Thank you,

[tedster]

Yes, if you tell Google to target your site to a non-US country, it can drop your rankings within the US.