European Version of site

how will google react

[Shakil]

I need some advice, and wondered if someone can put me straight on something.

We currently run an e-commerce site in the UK, on a .CO.UK domain hosted in the states, site is doing well in Google and I am quite happy with the traffic we are recieving.

We now want to branch out into Europe, and have acquired the .NET version of our domain, site will be in English, German and Spanish, however content on information pages etc will be very similar in English, although different prices etc will be shown.

What I need to know is this:

Will Google penalise in any way because of the following:

1, If content is similar.
2, domain is .net and will be hosted at SAME hosting company (different IP)
3, .co.uk will have a text link to .NET (european site)

basically we dont want to screw up our plans into europe, and would appreciate any advice.

thanks in advance.

Shak

[Eric_Jarvis]

hasn't seemed to happen to us Shakil

we are currently top on our main two word phrase on Google, and 13th for a single word which returns over 3 million results...in most languages we have pages in we turn up top on the relevant Google for whatever that keyword is in the particular language

so if we are being penalised in any way it is fairly minor

[Shakil]

Eric,

I see what you mean, but if I am not mistaken your different language sites are all on the same domain, are they not?

whereas we already have the .co.uk site > .net will be new but sharing some similar content etc etc.

Shak

[billy_t9]

eric thats no problem
for Google

she is too clever and will realis(z)e that there is a different language version

[heini]

Shakil, I don't see any problems with Google here.
The different languages make the content for bots completely - different.
I have not experineced any problems woth similar setups.

But - why do you want to do a site with three languages?
Why not three sites with one language each?
That would be so much better to promote!

[john5]

I started with two language versions on ONE site and later separated them into two different web sites. Both sites are hosted by the same provider, share the same database and have a common image pool. I am doing fine with this concept regarding flexibility, administration and last but not least - I have not had any trouble with Google so far.