One of the SEO tips given by many professionals is to make sure to host your web site in the country you want it to rank in. The truth is, it isn’t that important and may be irrelevant in many cases, Google said.

In a Google Webmaster Help thread, Google’s John Mueller said in response to the question of SEO and server location:

We did know Google uses ccTLD over location of the server. We also knew that the Google FAQs on the topic say:

But overall, it is nice to see such a strong word used by John, as “many cases it’s irrelevant.”

So if you are not using a ccTLD and you didn’t set your geo-details in Webmaster Tools and the language and content on the site don’t strongly suggest country bias, then server location is important but you’d have to think, how important…

Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

Image credit to BigStockPhoto for global servers