I’m an in-house SEO looking after a number of sites in a competitive vertical. Right now we have our core example.com site translated into over thirty different languages, with each one sitting on its own country-specific TLD (so example.de, example.jp, example.es, example.co.kr etc…).
We’re using a templated system so that changes to the .com domain propagate across all languages, though over the years things have become more complex in quite a few areas. For example, the level of analytics script hacks and filters we have created in order to channel users to each language profile is now bordering on the epic.
For a number of reasons we’ve recently been discussing the cost/benefit of migrating all of these languages into the single example.com domain. On first look this would appear to simplify things greatly; however I’m nervous about what effect this would have on our organic SE traffic.
All these separate sites have cumulatively received years of on/off-site work, so I would hate to lose all this hard-work (and business) if we saw our rankings tank as a result of the move (even if we went through the process of setting up page-for-page redirects to their new home on example.com).
So in today's environment of rapid-release algo changes which is the optimal site structure in the eyes of the search engines; Local sites on local TLD’s, or one mammoth site with language identifiers in the URL path (or subdomains)?
Is Google still so reliant on TLD's for geo-targeting results, or is it less of a factor in today’s search engine environment?
Interested in peoples views on this coming up to mid-way through 2011...
Cheers!
