I must admit, this thread surprises me a bit. I've always thought that if links are king in the English language, it probably must be the same for other countries (if I analyze the German or French SERPs, I see sites with many links rank high too after all).

But your main point is, that it's important to get inbound links in the same language (from sites in the same language)?

I assume this would play mostly a role if one is using the same domain for international versions of a site and focussing too much on getting links to the main site (in English) without getting links in other languages to the other versions of the website?

As in having an English site and a German, French, Spanish version of it on the same domain, but making the mistake of seeing the country-specific versions simply as a translation..and getting tons of inbound links in English, but not getting any/enough links in (and to) the German, French, Spanish versions of the site?

@Proffi: Nice to hear some information like that on local search, as the discussion whether it's hosting or ccTLD or both comes up quite a bit.

Was this a big site with a lot of traffic? Just curious if I can count (and cite) it as evidence ^^.