There will come a time in an enterprise's digital life when going "global" starts to become appealing, internationalizing the brand and its SEO efforts in order to acquire more visitors and capture more business.
While there are a whole host of issues brands will need to contend with (translation and all the business and cultural nuances of operating in a foreign land), one aspect that has caused some confusion and concern over the years has finally been cleared up.
Google's John Mueller recently addressed on Twitter
how the search engine geotargets search rankings to users in different locations around the world and it turns out, server location just doesn't matter.
Mueller, a well-known Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, indicated that for geotargeting, Google "mostly" uses the ccTLD or search console setting, suggesting in essence that the server location was not that important. Essentially, if you're in the U.S. and want to expand into the UK or Germany, there's no need for a separate hosting provider in that area (just use what is most convenient) and make the necessary change in Google Search Console.