Let me give you an example:
We have a client who has a .com and .co.uk pointing to the same site.
They are UK-based with a site which is also hosted in the UK.
Google completely ignores the .com pages and lists only the .co.uk pages - this is on 'international' and 'pages from the UK' searches.
Fast includes both .com and .co.uk pages. Lycos.co.uk lists only .com pages.
MSN also lists .co.uk and .com pages and AltaVista.co.uk lists only .com's in 'international' and 'UK' searches.
The whole thing seems unclear and confused - particularly if you are considering a PFI option. This leads currently to me being unsure of what to advise a new client do do regarding targeting. This is before you consider companies who have a .uk.com, .net or .info domain - where do they stand!
Good job it's Christmas!
[edited by: engine at 11:43 am (utc) on Dec. 23, 2002]
The problem with the above is highlighted when a country has a very high percentage of websites hosted outside of the country IP ranges. In this case, only the .uk sites would end up in the index. The .com/net/org/info would be excluded.
I've been working on the geo-targeting aspect for a few years now though the work has concentrated on Irish domain ownership. The work has resulted in a methodology of relating websites to countries. (I e-mailed Google/Altavista but never heard anything back from them.) At the moment, I just think that it is one huge vulnerability in all Page Rank - linkage type SEs. The only way to solve it is complex and it has to be approached on a country by country basis. The 'follow the yellow click road' method used by Google and the other big SEs will actually miss a percentage of the websites if a: the site has no inbound link and b: the SE has no fodder input of new websites.
Regards...jmcc
On PFI, particularly Alta Vista if you submit a .com site then you will be in the global index but not the country specific one, so will miss out on the .co.uk Alta Vista traffic unless you pay extra for the pages to be indexed in the country specific index. This can get quite expensive if you are doing a lot of submissions. Ironically, if you promote a .co.uk it automatically gets a double does of promotion in the global and country index.
IP filtering is what is used to provide the target eyeballs, but when you look at AOL as being from the US with a massive UK user base, any geographical strategy trying to use two domains will always be riddled with complexity and likely to fail.
We've only ever promoted a .co.uk for our own site, our intended audience is mainly UK businesses, but we do get enquiries and sales from US, Europe and Asia.
Chances are Google are ignoring the .com pages because it's not unique content, not because it's not UK specific. As for uk.com etc.. I'd be inclined to tell them to steer clear of them. If you notice they all have the same Alexa ranking, which makes me think that it's not as straight forward a registration process as some would have you believe.
Therefore, if you stump up the extra cash for inclusion in AV.co.uk does this mean that your .com will be treated 'equally' with .co.uk's and the only criteria is AV's algo(s) and relevance of the pages to the search? Or would the .com be buried under the .co.uk's?
Also, do you have any thoughts on Lycos.co.uk, particularly considering Fast PFI for UK company with a .com domain? Will this be filtered by .co.uk due to the .com domain, treated equally if it has a UK IP?
As I said above, I feel that this whole 'geofiltering' issue is very muddy and it is difficult to advise a client who may have their site located in the UK but targets a UK and US audience.
The whole issue seems to vary from engine to engine which makes it very difficult to advise a UK client on campaign planning and targeting.
For example, the same client I mentioned has pages listed in MSN.com for their .com and .co.uk domain - all via the INK PFI. The same is true for MSN.co.uk, so the conclusion I am drawing is that MSN globally is not fussy about the TLD and geofiltering, it's purely about pages which are relevant to the search. Is this your experience too?
The client I mentioned in my first post actually targets the US as their first key market with the UK a very close second.
I had considered your suggestion, but I think for most companies to maintain two sites hosted in different locations would probably be unrealistic. I know this is a valid approach, but for most I think this would become a management nightmare.
The main objective of my enquiries is to be able to advise 'new' clients on what the best strategy would be, related to their target audiences, domains etc.
It seems that this is a problem that others are contending with also.
widgets.uk.com would be a subdomain - not a true domain.
For my clients whose target market is the UK - then I promote the .co.uk domain and put a permanent redirect on the .com. This way only the .co.uk domain shows up on all indexes including international and UK. If they want to market outside the UK and in the UK - then it it is a 2 site solution with grammer, look and feel and content redesigned to suit the different markets. May be a harder way to do it - but it is the safest and most certain way to get in the correct indexes.
Oh, MSN UK does give a bias to .co.uk sites in INK listings and other regional MSNs do the same for their areas (i.e MSN Australia to .au.com and MSN to .com).
A few questions if I may on your post:
<put a permanent redirect on the .com.>
How do you avoid penalisation for the redirect?
<co.uk domain shows up on all indexes including international and UK.>
Are you saying here that a .co.uk page will compete equally in international searches undertaken from a .co.uk SE across the board? Is the site/page not at a disadvantage from .com's on international searches even undertaken from a .co.uk engine?
<it is a 2 site solution>
Do you also host the 2nd site in the target country, such as the US?
Many thanks!
You can do this server-side or (if that is difficult) just meta-refresh and have a robots.txt which disallows spiders from indexing the site.
>Are you saying here that a .co.uk page will compete equally in international searches undertaken from a .co.uk SE across the board?
Yes, I am.
>Is the site/page not at a disadvantage from .com's on international searches even undertaken from a .co.uk engine?
If optimised properly no, it will not be. Check my own site to see.
>Do you also host the 2nd site in the target country, such as the US?
Not always, but it can help a little bit sometimes.
