Does server location effects the SERP's of Search Engines??

[nick23]

Does location of the server of one's site effects the Search results by the different Search Engines?? I have heard to some webmasters who said that if you are trying to rank in a specific region or country then we have to get the server from there to get ranked better.

[frank]

Although it does make sense that if you have to get ranked for say US keywords then it is wise to get a server from US. But I don't think that is really important. If we target US based keywords and setup US settings in the webmasters tool, I think it will be good.

[Paul]

In Google its does play an effective role. John Mueller of Google have answered to this query. According to him.

For search, specifically for geotargeting, the server's location plays a very small role, in many cases it's irrelevant. If you use a ccTLD or a gTLD together with Webmaster Tools, then we'll mainly use the geotargeting from there, regardless of where your server is located. You definitely don't need to host your website in any specific geographic location -- use what works best for you, and give us that information via a ccTLD or Webmaster Tools.