CO.UK and COM

Using regional domains in search engines

[Andinio]

Okay, we have a web site that is international, however 80percent of our customers are from UK.

Our site is widget.com and is listed within google.com plus others.

Problem is, when people in the UK search for our keywords, because they are in the main using the UK search engines (by default normally), we don't appear in the listings - only if they use google.com do we have any position of credibility.

We also own the co.uk domain name for widget.co.uk which redirects the visitor to widget.com.

We now want to use the co.uk to reach our UK audience and therefore ask this question:

I want MSN and GOOGLE to see widget.co.uk plus widget.com so that we are recognised as UK and global.

Both sites would contain exactly the same information as they would both point to same server directories.

The benefit of the above means that when i register widget.co.uk and widget.com with say Inktomi, the .com would show in MSN.com and the .co.uk would show in MSN.co.uk

If google were to spider both domain names would they consider this as spam?

Can everyone see my problem and what we are trying to achieve? Your comments appreciated.

[glengara]

If G was to spider both, they'd drop one, commonly but not always the one with lower PR.
Why not re-direct from the .com to the .co.uk using 301?

[Andinio]

glengara wrote:
Why not re-direct from the .com to the .co.uk using 301?
.......................

re-directing from com to co.uk would then loose our listings under google.com, correct?

[glengara]

Well yes, but PR would transfer, and you could soon be back where you were but with .co.uk instead of.com

[MyWifeSays]

Andinio,

I don't think I can help you but am interested in your problem.

You are implying that '.com' domains are being penalized in google.co.uk searches where 'pages from the uk' is selected. I wouldn't have imagined this to be the case.

I would have thought that google.co.uk could determine whether the page is hosted in the UK. Is the page actually hosted in the UK?

Can anybody else help? I am considering buying a .com and if google.co.uk penalizes it then I won't bother.

[chrisandsarah]

hi. i have 2 .com sites- www.widget.com and www.uk-widget.com
widget.com is not listed in google.co.uk but uk-widget.com is.

is this because although its not got a .co.uk domain name, it does have uk in the actual domain name as a keyword?

thanks

[chrisandsarah]

oh. my uk-widget.com site is hosted in the uk, and my widget.com is hosted in the USA. Is that how it works then?
I seriously want to get my widget.com site into google.co.uk

[nicebloke]

>I would have thought that google.co.uk could determine whether the page is hosted in the UK

Yeah normally they can.

.com sites hosted on UK servers are fine and do come up in 'pages from the UK' still. I think the same is true of .co.uk domains hosted in the US.

[chrisandsarah]

so if i moved my widget.com site to a uk host, it should then get into google.co.uk and also remain in google.com?

[MyWifeSays]

I've just done a search for 'hotels' in google.co.uk with 'pages from the uk' selected and a '.com' without 'uk' in the domain name comes top.

Andinio, it would appear that having a '.com' is not your problem.

[MyWifeSays]

chrisandsarah,

Moving to a uk host sounds like the answer to your problem.

I've verified that the '.com' site found in google.co.uk is also found when searching google.com.

[glengara]

G will return a .com in "pages from the UK if it recognises it as being hosted in the UK.
However, no one else will, including Y! and AOL.

[edited by: glengara at 8:05 pm (utc) on Mar. 9, 2003]

[Andinio]

ok folks:

site is hosted in the uk

we are uk company

site is for greek client

client sells services to uk, itlay, greece, germany, in that order

...........
to say that our .com 'does not' appear within google.co.uk would be lie, but for sure our prominence is low compared to google.com.

This very same thing is true of msn.com and msn.co.uk

[Andinio]

chrisandsarah

how did you get your two domains registered with google without falling foul of potential spamming problems, or are they for different sites?

[chrisandsarah]

andinio:two different sites

Can i be 100% safe in the knowledge that if i moved our .com site to a UK host it would NOT lose it's listing and prominence on google.com and would only gain us traffic by eventually being included in the UK only google searches.

its weird. my .com sites is a tourism website about England, and i listed it in dmoz under England catergories. plus atleast 20% of our visitors are in the UK and use us for accommodation in the UK.

[glengara]

C+S, few things are 100% certain in this game; there are threads stating that some UK hosted .coms are not being recognised as such by G.

[alxdean]

I'd say host the .com site on a UK server if you want the added benefit of "UK only" searches.
My website is on widgets and hosted on a server in the UK. 20% of my visitors come from the uk searching on "widgets" alone, as I come up No3 on google.co.uk - UK only search, where on google.com I am buried somewhere between 30-50.

so yeah, hositng on a UK server has its benefits. And I can not see any negative effect on google.com for being on a uk server. thumbs up all along.

[MyWifeSays]

Andinio,

I've done a search through WebmasterWorld to see if anybody has discussed anything similar and haven't really come up with anything.

One thread about google.ca and google.com suggest there can be differences when Google is updating its index. Have you only seen this behaviour very recently?

[glengara]

Here's a past thread, there are more recent ones.
[webmasterworld.com...]
<added> it's gone!

[stever]

There are a number of discussions in the European forum, including this one:

[webmasterworld.com...]

[Russco]

I found this works best
.co.uk must be primary domain
.com diverts to .co.uk
submit .com to dmoz toplevel directory submit .co.uk to reg directory

wait 1 year do not change your site in any way

search on google.com your .com will appear first
search on google.co.uk it will appear first then.com

doesnt matter where its hosted. In fact its all pure luck as google will do as it sees fit and you can be sure the guy infront of you is cheating

[MHes]

Hi,
Google.co.uk does not default automatically to UK searches only, it is identical to the google.com search unless you click the 'UK sites only' button. So default searches list all sites whatever their hosting or tld.

Only about 30% of searchers click 'UK searches only'. Most UK searchers put "UK" on the end of their search phrase.

Sites that qualify for 'UK only' searches are either .co.uk and/or hosted in the UK. However, AOL and Yahoo.co.uk only take .co.uk sites for "uk only" and ignore hosting location. We have a .co.uk site hosted in the States that qualifies for UK only searches.

If you want to qualify for a regional search you will need local hosting and/or local domain ending.

[alxdean]

russco, you can't be serious about this.
Don't change your site in one year? what are you on? Any decent SEO will be making changes to his site at least once a month. If it is only adding new content.

I still say: host on UK server. that is the only explanation I have why my .com site comes up No3 on google.co.uk for a keyword that has 7 million SERPs on google.com and 500000 on .co.uk, UK only.
And trust me, my seo skills are not that advanced yet. on google.co.uk my site beats the main authority on my keyword, which has over 3000 backlinks. my site has a grand total of 34.

you want to be in google.uk with uk pages only?
Host on uk servers.

[MHes]

alxdean - or have a .co.uk hosted anywhere.

[Russco]

A year not long enough I say! been working with a company a whole year Great ranking deep crawl the lot minor modification to body text and bye bye G lists the site but it has no cache and all linked pages gone. took 2 mins to undo a years work. gets crawled every day but two updates later no movement. If it aint broke dont fixit. Google cant keep up with changes. If your biz in the uk then build your links from .co.uk to prop up your .com build links from .coms then dont dick with it. You have to bbe consistant and get it right first time because once G has it It will take months to correct any mistakes

[MHes]

Russco- Nice try, but I doubt anybody will take you seriously :)