Launching in the US

[findtheneedle]

We have a successful UK website and are building a similar but different US site.

Questions

1. To get good results in google US is it better to host the site in the US?

2. From the UK how do I see US google results to see how it is performing or will my results on google UK without using "pages from the UK" be the same as how they appear in the US?

3. Will having the same website but different on .com with the same name as the UK have any effect, would I be better off with a different name altogether for the US site?

4. Can anyone recommend a US phone directing company?

5. Anyone recommend any US freelance sales companies to sell on our behalf?

Thanks for your time!

[HuskyPup]

In my experience:

1. To get good results in google US is it better to host the site in the US?

Yes

2. From the UK how do I see US google results to see how it is performing or will my results on google UK without using "pages from the UK" be the same as how they appear in the US?

You'll need to use a US-based proxy server. Sometimes an Opera browser gives pretty reasonable US Google results although this may vary by version. Firefox from the UK will not give you US accurate results.

3. Will having the same website but different on .com with the same name as the UK have any effect, would I be better off with a different name altogether for the US site?

I don't quite understand your question! You're not suggesting slightly different but duplicate content are you?

example.com and example.co.uk using the same company domain name is fine, I use this across many international, regional and country-specific tlds. Incidentally for ranking purposes an example.us can do the necessary as well as com/net too...:-)

4 & 5 I have no idea!

[tedster]

From the UK how do I see US google results

This discussion from last year offers some ideas:
Seeing Country-Located Results - from outside the country [webmasterworld.com]

It's in the -- GEO-TARGETED SEARCH -- section of Hot Topics [webmasterworld.com], which is always pinned to the top of this forum's index page.

Also note that Google often serves different results in different cities and regions across the US and other countries, so there is no longer just one single US result.

[findtheneedle]

Thanks for the replies

The site is a directory and will have the same structure as the UK site but different companies. The thing that worries me is if we have a page on the uk site say for instance "nuts and bolts" featuring uk companies that sell "nuts and bolts" and then a page on the us site for "nuts and bolts" but featuring US companies.

Will this effect the rankings and would I be better off having the US site with a totally different name.

[tedster]

No worries - the US one might be filtered out in the UK and vice-versa, that's all (unless the query includes a location term, that is.)

[piatkow]

As I understand your point 3 you are worried that G will penalise you because example.com and example.co.uk both start with "example" but different content built around the same template?

The domains are different, your post implies that the content is different, the fact that the different content is arranged with the same template shouldn't be a problem.

[HuskyPup]

the fact that the different content is arranged with the same template shouldn't be a problem.

No problem whatsoever, I have 200+ sites all using the same basic template.

At least a dozen of these sites are identical in page construction so that when a user migrates from .com to .co.uk to .eu. to .asia to .in to .cn to .whatever, they are presented with identical layouts and instinctively know (I hope) where everything is, only the actual content is different even though it is still laid out in the same manner and positions and that even includes image pixel sizes both thumbnails and enlargements.