Okay, so now I know people who say cctld doesn't matter, but hosting matters A LOT. They point out that they haven't seen any evidence of cctld mattering before. However they can't come up with any evidence that hosting matters a lot, either.

On this forum the common opinion seems to be that a cctld matters more than hosting does (and if I had to decide between those two opinions I'd take the one from you guys on here as you've way more experience with this).

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but unless the effect of the hosting location is a very strong one (which it doesnt seem to be if everybody has a different opinion on this),

how would anybody know if hosting with a local hosting provider does matter, unless they have tried moving a site from a non-local to a local host before? (I know in SEO it's all about trying to spot things and not about fool-proof evidence, but I'm wondering if hosting only has a slight effect how anybody would be able to judge if its really the hosting that has the effect with so many other variables involved - unless of course theyve moved a site from a non-regional to a regional host before :-)).