Does location of my VPS and IP adress matter to Google's ranking?

[Makelmail]

We're busy with adding a German version of our webshop. Right now we're quit successful in The Netherlands with our webshop and SEO. I wonder if Google minds the location of the website (VPS) and IP address concerning SEO for our German webshop. If I Google on this subject I can not find a clear answer. Can somebody help me?

[DmitriiK]

Howdy.

In short - no, it doesn't matter. There are several videos from Matt Cutts on this topic. They're a bit old, but still apply.  https://www.google.com/search?q=server+location+matt+cutts&espv=2&source=lnms&tbm=vid&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiGveX-uurRAhUCr1QKHbtYClkQ_AUICSgC&biw=1745&bih=864

[Makelmail]

In all the video's matt says it does matter, I'm a bit confused. Our webshop is located in Holland right know, but we'll start a German version of it soon. Is my SEO negative affected when my webserver is still located in Holland or, not? Can somebody give me some advise?

[DmitriiK]

Ok, so, to clear the topic. It CAN matter, the keyword is "can", specifically for local content. The IP is one of many-many things, which is assessed by google for rankings, but far not the most important one.

Here is my recommendation:

If you are going to use completely different website with different tld for german version, like website.de and now you have website.nl, then yes, it might make sense to have separate hosting package and server in germany. Yet, you'd need to use hreflangs anyway, saying that it's the same company and website, just in different languages. Also you'd specify that in your GSC. That directly tells google what website is for what country. Therefore there wouldn't be any confusion on Google's side.

Now, here is another example. Let's say you are in Holland, content on the website has content about Holland and Germany, you have website.com domain (neutral, not .nl or .de), then Google maybe kinda confused in terms of where to rank you and look at IP.

Hope this makes sense.