In a word, yes, the physical location of the web server your website is hosted on can determine how well your website will show up in search engine results.
Google wants to serve its users with results which are relevant and likely to be the answer to the questions they are asking. This relevancy often depends on location e.g. If I’m looking for driving lessons in Clonmel, I’m not likely to be interested in motoring schools in New Zealand. In order to give relevant results, one of the things Google does is look up the IP address of the person who typed a search query in a Google Search.
Your IP address tells Google where your computer’s modem is located; say Waterford, Ireland. Google knows and stores the locations (IP addresses) of web servers in its database. That is, the computer which your website or blog sits on which your web hosting company uses, also connects to the Internet via a modem. In the same way that your home computer has its own IP address, so does the computer (webserver) your website is hosted on.
If the Google user lives in Clonmel and is searching for a ‘driving lessons’, it will take into consideration a Driving School’s website which might be hosted on a server in the same town.
So when selecting a hosting company keep the location of your primary audience in mind. It also helps if you use a .ie domain, of course.
If you plan to target your customers by country location, you can actually tell Google where your customers are by using the Geographic Targeting option. Here’s is Google’s Susan Moskwa to explain how:
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