.net, .com and .co.uk ranking differences

[internetheaven]

I have all three tlds for my next site:

example.com
example.net
and
example.co.uk

I want to appeal to UK, US and CA users but rather than create a different site for each country, I'd like one site and I think the .net would probably say "not really country-specific" if seen in google.co.uk, google.com or google.ca

Will it be harder to rank a .net in those three engines than using separate tlds? What sort of difference are we talking about?

e.g. if all three sites had 200 similar backlinks, keyworded titles and content what ranking differences would be seen between the tlds?

My opinion based on trying to rank those tld in various geo-specific Google engines would lead me to say (with a UK IP address server):

Google.co.uk - the .co.uk will rank higher than .net or .com
Google.com - the .com will rank higher than .net .co.uk
Google.ca - there will be no ranking difference across three tlds

I'd appreciate input
Thanks
Mike

[Receptional Andy]

I'd say .com is the 'non-country specific' top level domain of choice, since users from all countries are familiar with .com, and are used to seeing sites with that extension from both local and overseas publishers. .net is very similar, although is perhaps less familiar to users.

In terms of one getting a boost over another, I've never really seen this. .co.uk is recommended if you solely target a UK market, since it sidesteps any geo-location issues, and users will easily be able to recognise it as a local resource. But I've never seen any problems in promoting a .com as opposed to .co.uk for the UK market, geo-location quirks aside. Personally (and .info style fiascos [webmasterworld.com] aside), I don't believe any domain name gets a boost per se although there are some side effects of using one TLD or another, e.g. links to a .co.uk site using the URL as anchor text will always include 'uk' as one of the words.