jenstyle - 5:06 am on Apr 21, 2006 (gmt 0)

I'm a newb & this is my very first post on these forums - hello everyone :)

I'm in a bit of a quandry and hope someone can point me in the right direction.

We have a site, 'abc.com' that is targeted at our local audience. We also want to use another domain name 'xyz.com' for our international audience.

The current plan is:
- Both domains point to the same pages on our webserver
- The content of some pages will be customised per country based on user IP Address (using IP Redirection software)
- about 95% of the content will be the same

I have been looking around the forums, and it seems that this will be picked up as duplicate content by SE's.

My questions are:
- given that the two sites have completely different domain names, will they both still rank in SE's? or will one be dropped for duplication?
- how much do we need to change to avoid the dupe content filter?
- if the homepage and top level pages are different, and all other pages the same, will the whole site still be filtered out?
- will just changing metadata, and first paragraph or two, do the trick?
- can we control which site gets filtered out?
- what is the effect of IP Redirection software on bots?
- are there any issues with presenting different content for bots vs real people?

Also, can anyone tell me... in Google, when searching "The Web" are the results the same regardless of which local variation of Google is being used (ie. 'google.co.nz' vs 'google.co.uk')

I know, so many questions - but I really want to make sure we get this right.

Thanks!
Jenstyle :)