Two .com TLD sites with similar content, different Geo Preferences?

[israr]

Hello,

I have a hosting related site currently optimized for my own country country (in google webmaster tools) with a .com tld i.e. not a ccTLD.

Now I want to launch another website in .com as well (as a new brand) however it will be an international site, and its content / theme will be almost same as country level site.

I know google can detect international and local versions from its tlds and also from google webmaster tools. However in my case I can just do the settings inside the webmaster tools only.

So is there something else that I need to do in order to not get my site as spam content?

Thanks in advance!

[AnkitMaheshwari]

IMO for country domain: setting the geo-location in webmaster tool should do the trick along with local country address mentioned on the site and maybe name of the country in title of some pages.

[Robert Charlton]

Now I want to launch another website in .com as well (as a new brand) however it will be an international site, and its content / theme will be almost same as country level site.

I have no experience trying this, and this is conjecture, but the problems that jump out at me are...

a) new brand
b) duplicated content

This is very different from having the same content, localized as much as possible, on different cctlds of the same brand. With the same brand, Google expects cctld sites sharing content to be multiple geo presences of the same company.

With different .coms, the international site is going to bump into the geo-localized site in the country where you specify locality. Clearly in that country at least, the content will be seen as duplicate.

Either Google would know there was common ownership, or it wouldn't. If it didn't know that there was common ownship, how would Google differentiate the localized site from a scraper in a foreign country that had appropriated your content?

And even if it could identify common ownership, why would Google want to allow multiple brands to share the same content?

[israr]

And even if it could identify common ownership, why would Google want to allow multiple brands to share the same content?

Exactly!

I can have the content modified, However its the theme / design that I am worried more. Redesigning the whole site will be impossible as I have worked very hard on it for SEO / usability aspects.

Does google has some penalty for copying whole design (css, images, javascript etc)?

[santapaws]

robert are you saying google is ok for a brand to have the exact same content on ccTLD and .com? say for example the country is also english so a .co.uk and a .com. Can these sites be clones of each other and not harm each other?

[Robert Charlton]

robert are you saying google is ok for a brand to have the exact same content on ccTLD and .com?

santapaws - Google's goal is to allow companies with genuine international presence to share content on sites with common language across international versions of Google. That is not exactly the same as simply allowing sites to clone themselves across multiple ccTLDs.

Google is increasingly becoming locally focused, and Google ultimately will resist attempts to fake localization if it becomes common. International company practices of hosting all sites in central location, though, can sometimes make geo-determination difficult for Google.

Beyond ccTLDs, if the sites are all in English, I'd take pains to localize the content, addresses, and spelling on the different versions of the site. Geo sources of inbound links, even hosting location, are all signals that Google may use.

Here's a related discussion from some years back that's still worth checking. Comments about javascript links may no longer apply. The point is, the sites should be as independent as possible....

Linking a .ca to a .com with same content
http://www.webmasterworld.com/search_engine_promotion/3329008.htm [webmasterworld.com]

Also, some more recent thoughts I've had about other geographically close English-speaking countries and about Matt Cutts' video on hosting location, which I reference in the post....

Google Caching Wrong Site?
http://www.webmasterworld.com/google/4358988.htm#msg4359363 [webmasterworld.com]