.CO.UK site ranks above .COM

My UK site is ranking above my US site on Google.com

[dynol01]

I have .co.uk and .com site with identical content (contact information is different.) However, recently my .co.uk site began ranking higher than my .com site in Google.com. Even when I do a search for "mysite.com", my .co.uk appears before my .com site. This happens for all relevant keywords as well.

I want my .co.uk to continue ranking well in the UK, but not so much in the US. Any tips or ideas?

Thanks everyone!

[kaled]

Where are you searching from? You may be seeing different results to those that searchers outside the UK would see.

Kaled.

[ruchirasharma]

Check the cacheing date of both your domains, there is a possibility that your .com damian may be facing content duplication filter.

[dynol01]

Yes, Google looked at my .co.uk site a few days ago, but my .com hasn't been spidered in two weeks. What can I do to fix this?

Also, I am searching from the US on Google.com.

Thanks everyone!

[Wonderstuff]

Off topic but, aren't you duplicating content by having two sites that are almost identical? Maybe you are not an adsense publisher.

[edited by: Wonderstuff at 2:58 pm (utc) on Jan. 5, 2007]

[dynol01]

The duplicate content issue does seem to be a problem. But I have to believe I'm not the only one that has a website in both the UK and US. Pricing/contact information is different for both sites and users have the option to choose their home country at any time.

If anyone is interested, the search I am doing is <removed> on Google. My site will be the first result.

Thanks,

[edited by: encyclo at 3:31 pm (utc) on Jan. 5, 2007]
[edit reason] See terms of service [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]

[Receptional]

Off topic but, aren't you duplicating content by having two sites that are almost identical? Maybe you are not an adsense publisher.

Not so off topic I think.

Use Yahoo (not Google) to look at your back links to each one. My guess is that more (or more QUALITY) links go back to the .co.uk hence that one is seen as more relevent.

[Edit Add] You should remove that soecific search before a mod or admin does it for you...[end edit add]

[edited by: Receptional at 3:15 pm (utc) on Jan. 5, 2007]

[dynol01]

Interesting thought about the incoming links.

According to Yahoo, I have 12 incoming links to .com and 4 to .co.uk.

So much for that idea...

[chelseaareback]

dyno

i get yr .co.uk from g.co.uk and yr .com one from g.com

[dynol01]

"i get yr .co.uk from g.co.uk and yr .com one from g.com"

Can someone else verify this?

I've tried the search on many different google US datacenters and always get .co.uk first...

[edited by: encyclo at 3:38 pm (utc) on Jan. 5, 2007]
[edit reason] no specific search terms please, see terms of service [/edit]

[PCInk]

Is your IP a UK ip address (the computer you are searching from, not the website)?

[dynol01]

PCink,

I am searching from Ohio and my IP address is linked to the Cleveland area.

Thanks

[dynol01]

If this is an issue of duplicate content, why would Google choose my UK site over the US one?

[giuliorapetti]

Dynol01,

Where are the two websites phisically located?

I mean, is the .co.uk website served from the very same server of the .com?

In any case, where is the server phisically located?

Have you used a specifict geotargeting tool to query Google results?

Using the Google .com version from UK doesn't have the same effect of usign the same identical Google URL from the US...

[dynol01]

The sites are hosted on the same server - The server is US based.

What kind of Geotargeting search tools and resources are available?

Thanks

[mattg3]

The sites are hosted on the same server - The server is US based.

G seems to really use ISP IP as an indicator of the sites target index. I guess your site is seen as US American.

The geotargeting is completely broken imo. There is no free hosting choice anymore unless you want to ruin all of your traffic.

I can really not see the logic in this ISP IP thing.

.com in english targeted at the whole english seaking world.
.co.uk more likely Britain although of course many want to target the international market
.de Germany
.fr France
and so on.

But then millions of webmasters will have other intended target markets.

Wouldn't it be good to have some tag that could indicate to Google what one wants. This could be cross referenced with TLD and language on the server if it makes sense. IE a suaheli site targeted at Mongolia might be not really that logic. Although you might offend African immigrants in Mongolia. ;)

[centime]

An obvious solution would be to differentiate both domains if you intend to keep both.

I also would prefer to use seperate cctlds for us & uk targeted sites, but having realised it means double work, I am reluctantly sticking to my .net

I experimenting with some new domains,

[giuliorapetti]

Centime,

You can't even do that (splitting the content across different domains to please the aim of two TLDs).

As for Google, size matters.

This is why I'll never accept the approach of splitting my multi-thousand-urls content across 5 or even worse, 10 different TLDs for the sake of ranking well in Spain, France, Brazil, etc.

I suggest to stay on one single domain from which Google can see the importance of your network, without risking penalizations for crosslinking, dup content, multiple sites hosted on one single IP etc.

Regarding the "strange" logic currently applied (not only by Google: I must say that Google is the one who get it less wrongly than the other main engines), I've posted on

[webmasterworld.com...]

a "scientific" explanation of why the location of the server is a wrong approach to geotargeting.