Changing from .co.uk to .com.?

[anzagi]

Hi all,

I have a website which was built around 4 years ago, it has a .co.uk TLD, hosting is U.S based. The site ranks very well in google at the moment with general search terms, generally speaking the site is well established and pulling in good traffic from organic searching.

However, whilst my target market is worldwide, the majority of visitors are U.S based. I am thinking I should perhaps change my TLD to .com to help even further with rankings and target audience - but I am very worried that the change will affect my rankings?

Does anybody have experience of this, or any facts relating to what should typically happen in that scenario?

many thanks in advance

[edited by: tedster at 2:17 pm (utc) on Nov. 5, 2009]

[tedster]

This has been a very common question. There are two really solid discussions about it in our Hot Topics area [webmasterworld.com]:

Advice on moving a site to a different domain [webmasterworld.com]
Moving to a New Domain - Official Advice from Google [webmasterworld.com].

Recently Google added a "Change of Address" form to Webmaster Tools that can speed the process of transferring rankings along. But the greatest majority of people making a domain change still report weeks, if not months, of lost rankings and lost traffic.

[anzagi]

Thanks for the reply....so it really is a risk and a hit and miss as to whether it'll regain ground quickly or not...its a shame. I guess I just need to weigh up whether the move will gain more traffic in the long run, which I'm not ever so sure it will....

[tedster]

If you can nail the technical side (page-by-page 301 redirects, no canonical problems, good crawlability for the new domain, no server bugs, getting a good bunch of existing backlinks changed, getting some new backlinks after launch, etc) then the change might well be worth it in the long run.

By definition a .co.uk TLD cannot be internationally targeted. So you've done quite well if you are getting a lot of US-based traffic to your .co.uk domain. Even if your content has a US focus, that's an achievement. But it's still not truly international, and if that is an important busiess goal then the move is worth a very close study. And if you do make the move, "measure twice cut once."

[Robert Charlton]

If it's a seasonal site, I would definitely wait until you're in your off-season before making the change.

[engine]

I've been through this a few times, and the advice you've been given by tedster and Robert_Charlton is sound.

One of the domains that was switched took about a year to get back to anything like the rankings the other site held. Why it took that long, I don't know, it just did.

Don't expect overnight success and you should feel more comfortable.

[Whitey]

Why don't you run both sites at the same time. Gogle will filter each appropriately and your geo targeting could be separated for wach domain.

I'm not sure if this works, but I've read a few threads around the traps.

[tedster]

That is another possible strategy. However, the .com does not get the benefit of the backlinks that point to the .co.uk when you take that approach, so it can take a long time to build up rankings for the new domain.

[kidder]

Just link the uk site and .com site and extend of the existing authority, I would go for two sites every time. Just make sure your .com site is not a clone of the UK version and you should be fine.