anallawalla - 9:43 pm on Oct 15, 2009 (gmt 0)

The safest option would to build each site from a clean slate so that each site is very different, although serves the same purpose.

and

Instead of penalties, there is filtering that keeps any one business from dominating the results in any geographic area

Couldn't agree more, but multinationals don't often have the appetite for such things.

This reminds me of a former employer's overseas sites. They don't have as many ccTLD domains active now, but compare:

• site:www.example.com (main site, 2580 pgs)
  
• site:www.example.com.au (45 pgs)
  
• site:www.example.se (9 pgs)
  
• site:www.example.es (138 pgs)
  
• site:www.example.dk (46 pgs)
  
• site:www.example.co.uk (99 pgs)
  
• site:www.example.fr (164 pgs)
  
• etc