international country code domains...are they worth acquiring?

should i purchase a co.uk, nz, au, ca or other country code?

[jonpurgason]

my .com website is already listed in google.de, and other main country search engines when you search in that area.

So is there any benefit to obtaining the same domain name with different country codes? Do most foreigners use global search preferences, or local preferences? I am trying to find what benefit it gives me to obtain other country codes for my website.

Any suggestions?

[davezan]

Ideally you only get the extension of the country you're targetting to promote to.

[jonpurgason]

Well, I am targeting all countries...but would it help my efforts if I got additional country code domains?

[bill]

Local domains can be helpful to some search engines and directories for categorizing your site. I know of local search engines which will only return results for specific country domains. However, it all depends on which countries and languages you're targeting. ex. Buying a .jp domain to target the Japan market will not be too effective if you don't have content in Japanese.

[jonpurgason]

Know of any good search engines such as mentioned, that receive a lot of traffic? know any good data on the web that can tell me of these international search engines as you mention? thanks.

[krooga]

As stated by Bill, a local domain extention can boost your ranking on country specific engines.

There as been theories that Google UK gives more importance to a site hosted in the UK and with a .co.uk extention, on top of that, say a user does a search with the parameter "pages from the UK", having a .co.uk extension could probably boost your ranking...

[robertskelton]

If you want a hassle-free time, stick with one domain. Search engines can and do get confused if you re-direct or have duplicated content.