Hi all, I'm based in India, and looking around for a VPS host. It's down to 2 options, local or US hosting. I'm told that if my host is in India, that will help my Indian search ranking, but that if my host is in the US, it will help my US ranking. Is this really true? Why would it be so? Is it some kind of algorithm that assumes added relevance if the host is local?
Yes this is true if you want to target "local" search .ca .es etc. best to have country based hosting
Yes for local searches you must use your country extension it is good for getting rank in region specific Google search.
I think the OP is wondering about the server location itself, not domain, and whether it affects SEO or not. If you have a country specific TLD domain, then no the location of the server does not matter. If you have a generic domain TLD, then I believe it does affect SEO, but I honestly wouldn't think by much.
Sever location does affect your SERPs, but in my opinion, the effect is minimal. Don't worry about it. Just go the server which you think is best.
If your website has a generic domain name suffix such as .com, .org, .info, .biz and so on, then google and the other search engines will deterine the location of your website by looking at where your servers are based. So if your are a US company, and you are working hard at seo to get US visitors, but your hosting company has servers based outside of America then your site will not show up in the US search results - potentially costing you huge amounts of money.
Yes, you want to prefer the host where you would like to target. Search engines consider the hosting country of the particular site while listing in local searches.