Can Physical Location of a Web Host Affect Search Engine Rankings?

Many of us do not look at the physical location of a web host before purchasing hosting space. But according to some staff at Google, the physical location of a web host might have some bearning on the rankings of a site, especially if the site is targeting customers/clients from a particular region.

Quote :

In our understanding of web content, Google considers both the IP address and the top-level domain (e.g. .com, .co.uk). Because we attempt to serve geographically relevant content, we factor domains that have a regional significance. For example, “.co.uk ” domains are likely very relevant for user queries originating from the UK. In the absence of a significant top-level domain, we often use the web server’s IP address as an added hint in our understanding of content.

Source: Official Google Webmaster Central Blog

There is a also a forum discussion going on here: Do you look at the physical location of a web host

Using DOFOLLOW Blogs For Backlinks

Its common knowledge that most blog these days use nofollow attribute to comment links. But there are blogs that use dofollow attribute (or  rather, dont use nofollow) in blog comments. Getting links from such sources can  help boast your link popularity. However, this technique is being overused(misused?) now by most link seekers (spammers?) . In most webmaster forums i visited recently, there were threads here and there discussing this technique and some overzealous people were even offering softwares for finding such sites.  I predict – most of these dofollow sites are going to implement NOFOLLOW soon and this technique will be rendered useless within next few months.