Geolocation - hosting same site on multiple country TLDs?

[Pass the Dutchie]

I am seeing a number of sites hosting their website across different international domains.

One of the sites is question is a German Swiss site on a .ch domain. In the past they did well on google.ch but did not well on google.de. Now they have duplicated their entire site on a .de domain and they are starting to do well on google.de

Their .ch domain is 10 years old and is heavily promoted but in comparison they have only just started to promote their .de and are doing surprisingly well.

Site in question is linked to each other from every page, whois data is the same BUT they are each hosted in their respective countries.

I am thinking about doing the same but I am worried about a duplication penalty.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 4:01 pm (utc) on June 30, 2009]

[tedster]

Google reps have frequently recommended using a country-code TLD for each specific country you want to target. Along with that, the idea of a "duplicate content penalty" is close to a myth - such a thing only happens when truly egregious spamming is found.

There's a good reference thread in our Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com], with links to Google's official article about that:

Duplicate Content demystified at Webmaster Central Blog [webmasterworld.com]