international webshop question

one of my clients is expanding his webshops in several other languages. we bought a few domains for all the countries.

what would be better for ranking in those countries? one domain and subfolders (like domain.com/en , domain.com/es, ...) or more domains and setting up the language under that domain? (domain.com , domain.es)

and another question: how important is the ip-location as ranking factor?

to ranking, domains is the best.

The IP/location i think is not a ranking factor, because i have my server on other countries and i rank 1 on several competitive keywords on my language.

If you can aford several servers you can benefit if you put each domain on diferent C classes and linking between domains.