Same content with different country extensions. Isn't this spam?

[Coppercavanders]

I have recently seen many websites that create different suffix to target different countries. Same language.

For eg: They will create Widgets.com for US audience, Widgets.co.uk for UK market, Widgets.com.au for Australia audience, Widgets.in for India, and etc. All these websites will have literally the same content in the same language. The only thing that would change is perhaps the Prices. If its targeting US, it would be in USD, If UK, then in Pounds Sterling and likewise.

Is this allowed ?. Isnt this duplicate content ? . Are there any guidelines to follow incase this is allowed.

Please help.

Cheers.

Copper

[tedster]

The content should be more localized than simple currency changes, but country TLDs are a common and even Google-recommended approach to getting ranked on the country-specific Googles. It's much better to customize the spelling and text to the local idiom, however.

Google is currently struggling with country geo-location - no doubt about that. But I don't expect to see duplicate sites ranking on the same exact search for very much longer. Where that happens, I'm pretty sure it's not what Google wants to see. Rather example.co.uk should rank well only on google.co.uk and so on.

I doubt that the intention of these companies is spam. Instead, they are trying for country-specific rankings, but Google is still messing up in this area.