Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
I've got a multinational client. They want to use ccTLDs for each country. So for example, they want www.xyz.co.uk, and www.xyz.com.au, and www.xyz.co.nz, and the list goes on for many MANY other countries.
Obviously ccTLDs rank better on Google's regional search engines. For example, .com.au ranks better on google.com.au (give link pop, on page optimisation, those things, are all equal). A .com.au name will outrank a ".com" on google.com.au even with less link pop. And, if you select "pages from au" ONLY .com.au domains ranks. So that is the case for spliting each country into it's ccTLD... in regional google engines ccTLDs are a big help. Googles guidlines even say split it into ccTLD to help google.
THE PROBLEM....!
However, each countries content is the same as every other country because... someone going to the NZ site may want to book a holiday just in NZ, or they may want to book a holiday from the .NZ site to another country. So the .nz site will contain a page on "booking (keyword) in NZ" and it will contain a page on "booking (keyword) in UK) because the NZ visitors may do both. So the NZ visitor wants the page with the info on NZ locations, AND the info on the UK locations.
You might say, only put NZ products on the NZ site, etc, to keep each site unqiue. And make someone who goes to the NZ site go to the .co.uk site to book and get information on a holiday in the UK.
It doesnt work because the New Zealand visitor wants to book in their currency and speak to support staff in NZ... not go to the .co.uk site to book a holiday there. From a usability perspective, switching domains on users can be confusing too. The user is on .nz and then suddenly they click a link "holidays in UK" and they get switched to the UK domain.
At the moment, i am thinking of recommending to create duplicate content across all the ccTLDs, and hope Google will know that if someone searches on the New Zealand Google, to give the vistor my clients page from there .nz site.
How would any of you handle this? Hopefully someone who has real expeirence in this kind of thing can comment. Thanks,and i look forward to hearing what you have to say.
I have ~6 mirror servers hosted in as many countries, all under the *same* TLD (.org) with the country code earlier in the domain name.
G does not seem to penalise on the the basis of duplicate content, but seems to understand that they are legitimately copies "close" to the user.
YMMV
Rgds
Damon
