Duplicate problem - .com and .co.uk

If I have the same website on .com and .co.uk will there be any penalty?

[digitalwolf]

Hello

I launched a year ago my website on the .com domain.Right now my business is expanding and I need to publish the site on the .co.uk domain.
Since there are actually the same products, I need to import from the .com all the descriptions and additional information. To keep it short...probably the .co.uk will have only 10% original content (prices in pounds :) ).
My main concern in this case is that one of my websites (or even both) will be penalized by Google.
Unfortunately I can't alter the contents since the products are the same...only the price is set in pounds.

Have you any advice to avoid this...if indeed it applies in my case?

I must appologise if this question was asked before on this forum, but I was not able to find it yet.I appreciate any advice or link to a previous post.

PS - The domain name is exactly the same (x.com and x.co.uk)

Thanks all!

[Kufu]

Yep, this spells trouble. You simply don't want to have duplicate content. Logically your .co.uk site should be the one to suffer since it is new, but you never know how the engines will react. The best thing would be to rewrite the content for the new site. You'll just need to describe the products in different ways, as the idea you are trying to get across can remain the same.

[cornwall]

Trying doing some research on 301 redirects.

[Kufu]

Trying doing some research on 301 redirects.

A 301 redirect wont do much in helping get a .uk site get listed (and ranked) in the .uk engines though.

[g1smd]

If the .com is hosted in the UK, then it can rank for UK searches.

Having two sites with very similar content will result in very poor indexing for both of them.

Choose which URL you want to appear in search results, and 301 the other one.

[Erku]

I did not relize that my article print pages could have been considered duplicate content.

I just now made the appropriate changes (noindex nonfollow) adn now should be all good.

My question is this. If I was "duplicate" what penalties have I had so far.

Now since I am good, what positive consequences and when should I feel it?

Now that I am in compliance, could I hope for better traffic? And when will I see the change?

Thank you.

[digitalwolf]

I studied the problem...and is quite tricky.If I am a corporation and I have a worldwide network of websites, all hosted on different domain names,I would have a problem with the SE penalty for duplicate content.You might say that they have original content (in the local language) but they need to publish a general presentation in english on each one of them.
I can try to change the description but I would really like to know from your personal experience on what extend should I do this.My goal now is to change them as least as possible.
Should I go for 20%-30% change (translating US International expressions in UK locals - ex:cell vs mobile, etc..)?
Do I need to go over 50% changes in the text?

Thanks for all the answers so far!

[Frank_Rizzo]

Why not just keep the .com site and detect where users are from.

If the user is from the US set cookies to display all prices in $. If the user is from the UK set prices to be shown in £.

If you can't detect that have a front page asking where the user is from. If the users miss that keep displaying a header menu option asking the same.

No need to run two sites. Just master the .com

[inbound]

Here is what I would do:

* Do a 301 from the .co.uk to the .com

* Gain good UK links (this indicates to Google that the site is relevant to the UK too - although you may still lose out on the small proportion of searches that are for 'sites from the uk')

* Create a visible (but small) US and UK flag or drop down box that switches prices to/from USD/GBP (but using the same URL's for either price - you may need to set up apache to parse html as php if your pages were static then add the neccesary code - or use htaccess to internally rewrite htm pages to the new php counterpart)

* Ask more questions as you go

[Moncao]

Show $ on the com and Euros on the co.uk. "Argue" any ban.

[digitalwolf]

Indeed...I will display a different currency on the websites.But I think that this will affect only 1-2% of the content. And I still need to use the pound sign since in UK this is the official currency (they are not part of the European Monetary Union)
I still need to think a strategy in order to publish this as I intended.I tried to alter the text...but unfortunately...from my point of wiew is not reflecting how it should the products.

Thanks for the feedback!

[webspy]

I would try to make the sites as much different as you can - without hurting the corporate identity of course. For example you can display different favourite products on each site or have different offers or so...

[Eazygoin]

To clarify on the basis of what has been written on here to date:
It seems that so as to avoid a dupe penality, the content should be different for both UK and USA.....but what about the layout of the site, and the tags....in other words, can this guy use the same format [as if it were the same template], but just change the content?

[stunningorange]

How about this:
*Create a UK based country page, optimised for UK based terms
*302 redirect the .co.uk to the UK page (rather than a 301 to the .com index page)
*Gain UK based links directed to the .co.uk domain

Google should keep the .co.uk domain in the index if you use a 302 - and rank it in UK searches. The UK based links will help it gain this relevancy

[g1smd]

If you use a 302 redirect to redirect to some other place, you can use the <base> tag on the target page and keep the starting URL of the redirection chain in the index instead of the target page. Take a lot of care with that, otherwise both URLs get toasted.

.

>> And I still need to use the pound sign since in UK this is the official currency. <<

* Ahem * See ISO 4217 [google.com], for just what you require these days.