Google Ranking and Country TLD

Will this affect Google Ranking

[newborn]

Hello guys, please help me out with this. I have a great .com with a specific country name in the URL. I have now acquired the .com.au domain as well. I want to do a 301 redirect to my main domain. Most of my traffic comes from the US, UK, Canada and the Caribbean. If I do that redirect will it hurt my current rankings in Google under the .com or will it improve it.

Can I actually copy the entire site and host it as a new website under the .com.au and it wont be seen as duplicate content and be banned by G. Can anyone give me some sound advice on how Google views these type of domains and if redirection can boost or cause a problem.

[Robert Charlton]

This question is getting asked a lot for different English language countries. Here's a post that references several other threads discussing the issues.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Robert Charlton]

As a PS to the above, a 301 redirect of a domain is very different from hosting multiple versions of the site with different TLDs.

If you 301 redirect international TLDs to your current site, it's not necessary to have a physical site present for each TLD (at least not for those that don't require foreign presence for hosting). It isn't going to broaden your ranking base, but it's not likely to hurt it. You would be preventing competitors from using the international versions of your domain that you've used as redirects.

Can I actually copy the entire site and host it as a new website under the .com.au and it wont be seen as duplicate content and be banned by G.

On the other hand, slapping up an unlocalized copy of your current .com site without a true international presence is likely to create dupe problems for you.

Google looks for indications of presence in foreign countries. Duplicate English language sites require Google to look beyond simply language and TLDs... and they look at host location, inbound link sources, and indications of international presence (things like customization of the site for a specific country, different outbound links, local addresses, etc).

When they don't find this international presence, they're more likely to consider the content duplicate. At that point (depending largely on hosting and on what inbound links you happen to get), Google will choose which of your sites they prefer to display in the main and local indexes.

Do read the above-mentioned discussions.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 7:29 pm (utc) on Sep. 1, 2007]

[glengara]

If the .com.au domain is "on topic" and the incoming links have anchor text relevant to the .com it may be worth a 301, if not, not :-)

[Whitey]

Can I actually copy the entire site and host it as a new website under the .com.au and it wont be seen as duplicate content and be banned by G.

All of what Robert has quoted i can verify first hand. You will have duplicate content issues.

Also, when you 301 redirect your old site to a new one, expect to loose traffic. How long depends on how Google treats the new site. We have 2 new sites , with different TLD's and they are behaving very differently and certainly we have lost a lot of traffic in the 301 exercise - this is 10 weeks now. Who knows for sure when it will restore fully - some say up to 12 months.

You need to ask yourself why are you doing this and if the time and expense managing additional sites and the inter relational issues, versus potential extra traffic can justify itself.

[edited by: Whitey at 3:32 am (utc) on Sep. 18, 2007]