I have heard that Google and other major search engines, associate a particular web page to a particular country on the basis of backlinks from specific region (also the IP location of host server and country code of domain)...which helps pages in SERP results for the searches from that specific country. so I wanted to know from experts that whether getting local or regional backlinks hurt the global ranking of a webpage in SERPs...thanks in advance.
It didn't hurt in my case: I'm targeting US customers only! Geographic Targeting is not a good idea if your business is global.
I've never seen any convincing evidence that backlinks are a factor in determining geo-location, and its an issue I've been working on for several years. The search engines have never mentioned it as a factor, and when you think about it, it just doesn't make sense that they would. A site can't be sort-of related to one country, and more related to another. The only effect backlinks can have in this regard would be if the search query included a location name which was also used in the anchor text of some of those links. The only known factors that affect geo-location are (1) the presence of a Country Code Top Level Domain Name (or 'ccTLD', as in somesite.co.uk), and (2) for generic TLDs like .com, .net, .org, etc. the physical location of the server that hosts the site, based on its IP address. Google used to say they would also sometimes consider the domain registration data, but they never detailed when this was used.
I experimented this on a brand new site which is hosted on a server in USA. I went for directory submission to about 2000 free directories. Within a month I had many backlinks but I found out that 90% of my traffic was coming from India though my site was hosted in USA. This was because most of the free directories which accept submissions are hosted in India. So one should be careful where he gets the backlinks from.
I agree with you rainborick but still confused because of the issue roger had discussed thanx all of u.
Don't worry about it, it won't hurt your global rankings... instead it will help your websites rank higher on specific local searches