Does domain registrar location (still?) play a role in SEO

[AndersS]

I was wondering if the location of our domain registrar still play a role in SEO. The thing is that one of our domains are registered with a registrar in another country. It is a national TLD (.no). Could this have any influence on our rankings?

The reason for asking is that i came across this article at Search Engine Journal:
http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-rankings-influenced-by-server-domain-registrar-and-geographic-location/5963/ saying: "
Hosting is not the only variable Google may look at when determining search relevance for a site, here is a look at hosting, domain registrar information and geographic location."

I was wondering if what is said here, still is valid (article is from 2007).

Hope you guys can help me out.

[gfiorelli1]

To have the domain name hosted in another country than the targeted one is still a factor, even though - IMO - is a minor one.

It is a factor because it reinforce the geo targeting of a website and its local nature.

On the other hand, being you domain termination a cTld (.no), you know that Google automatically focus it for the Google.no index, no matter where the domain name has been actually registered.

Finally, as Richard Baxter made noticed in a comment to a Rand's WBF about International SEO, exist other method (Proxy) to avoid this location issue: http://seogadget.co.uk/proxy-caching-for-seo/

Hope this helps you

Cheers

[AndersS]

Thank you for your reply Gianluca.

Actually, the domain is hosted in Norway (server located in Norway), but the registrar is outside of Norway. That is why it think this was a difficult question   So when referring to te article from SEJ, I was wondering if the location of the registrar itself (not where the domain was hosted) was an issue

But it actually did help me Thanks!!

[tylerfraser]

If you're worried, switch it to a local registrar. It won't take too long to propagate. I would go for it, if it's not a high trafficed site.