building a .co.uk for getting google UK traffic

already have a .com

[jaski]

We already have a .com site for selling widgets.
We are losing all the traffic which comes from people doing "UK Sites Only" searches through google.co.uk because the site is filtered out.

Site is database driven and has around 400 categories and 40,000 widgets in all. Most of these products pages have no content other than

widget make
widget model number
widget price

ie just barebones content.

Now what I am contemplating is building another site on a .co.uk domain. But the only fear is a google penalty for duplicate content because of very little scope for adding/modifying content.

So to overcome duplication if I add some fluff on the second site product pages, do I stand a chance to deceive google ;)
(and perhaps increase/decrease prices of widgets by a pound each to avoid price duplication)

(Hope Google Guy is not around ;) .. just in case he is .. GG a site with .com domain which is listed in DMOZ UK directory is not counted by google as UK site .. and we can't leave it after 2 years of building PR .. I wonder what stops google from keeping those in)

Any alternatives?

[sem4u]

Your .com should not be filtered out if it is hosted in the UK! It may do on Yahoo & AOL UK though.

[quiet_man]

>>Your .com should not be filtered out if it is hosted in the UK!<<

But some are filtered out. Clearly Google's regional filter is flawed - there have been plenty of threads about this in the past. Most recently, it seems that the last update saw an additional level of erroneous filtering - see these threads:

Google getting locations wrong from IP addresses [webmasterworld.com]
Google UK - still old results [webmasterworld.com]

What jaski describes is the inevitable consequence of the move towards regional results (whether correctly filtered or not). A single site cannot now expect to do well on google.com AND google.co.uk (or on Froogle and google.co.uk). As more searchers start to specify 'pages from the UK', it is clear that a site targeting a UK market must be included in this data set. But if you also want to target US customers ... well, a multi-site stategy seems the obvious option. The difficulty is, as jaski outlined, how to differentiate your content sufficiently so that you don't trip duplicate content filters, gain new DMOZ listings, etc.

I'm sure this isn't what Google intended, but how else can an online business now target multi-national markets via the SERPs except by building a series of country specific sites?

>>(Hope Google Guy is not around ;)<<
I hope he is! He has commented on the regional issue, in the context of Froogle, but not conclusively:
Question msg: #287 [webmasterworld.com]
Googleguy reply msg: #303 [webmasterworld.com]

[engine]

Find out why it's being filtered before you go to the trouble.

Something to get you thinking...
Where's it hosted (UK)?
Do you have links from DMOZ UK section, etc.

[jaski]

Thanks for the inputs.
NO its not hosted in the UK. Its hosted on a server located in the US.

Do you have links from DMOZ UK section, etc.

Exactly.

Listed in
dmoz.org/Regional/Europe/United_Kingdom/Business_and_Economy/Shopping/

bit further down in this tree ..

Moving hosting to UK will be a good amount of hassle and cost .. not sure at this juncture if its wise to try that ...

[sem4u]

>A single site cannot now expect to do well on google.com AND google.co.uk (or on Froogle and google.co.uk).

Some sites have absolutely no problem!

[Crazy_Fool]

set up the separate .co.uk with new content on the main content pages, and use http:// links to the catalogue with the products on the .com. the new "fixed" content will give you traffic in the uk but you'll use the same US catalogue and avoid duplication.

[cabman]

Supposing those .com pages to be linked, in actually produce good serps in their own right, I think the whole thing would need to be re-written for new .co.uk

Any thoughts?

[jaski]

Actually inside pages (product pages) pull major chunk of the traffic. Widget Model No is the most important keyword .. and there are 40K odd such widgets. That is why even skinny pages which have only 3 things

widget make
widget model number
price

are pulling in traffic.

I think there is hardly any room for creativity for content modification .. cannot change widget make .. cannot modify model number .. that leaves only the price to play with... and 40K soooooo.... similar pages on two sites are bound to attract a Google penalty IMHO.

If I use different CaSe lettering for widget make and model number .. will those qualify as separate.. hmm.. though I don't think so because google is case insensitive in searches.

[cornwall]

Certainly I have no problems getting good Google positioning using UK filter with a dot com hosted in the UK.

Just to satify my curiosity I tried several searches on google.co.uk with the UK filter and it seems to work well.

If you host the site in the USA, it may be less hassle to move to a UK based server than it is to set up a new mirror dot co dot uk site

[jaski]

Another question related to this is .. if I go ahead and build a near duplicate site to one that already exists .. and if it does get caught as duplicate by google ..

will the new site get penalty .. or can the original one be affected as well .. because if its the former then I can well take the risk .. nothing much to lose ... but if its the latter then I cannot. .. ahum..is this a question that I should ask on the google forum?

Thanks
Jaski

[glengara]

I'd second what Cornwall says, when Google .ie came out I switched my .com hosting to Ireland and appear in the "pages from ireland" category.
Did a bit of research before picking my host, made sure all their servers were based here, and then decided on a dedicated IP as well.

[gsx]

That's fine for Google if you switch hosting, but what about Google results sent elsewhere, such as AOL and Yahoo which seem to use simpler filtering. Then there is those few engines that still filter anything without a 'uk' in the domain extension that need considering too. This is not a Google specific issue, but an overall view we should be thinking about.

[cornwall]

but what about Google results sent elsewhere, such as AOL and Yahoo which seem to use simpler filtering

Those both appear to work fine with my dot com sites that are UK specific and are on UK ISP

I have had problems with Alta Vista in the past, having had to correspond to get acceptance. On checking just now, those are fine too.

[jaski]

Moving this particular website to a UK ISP sounds like the best option by far. But doing some thing like that sounds a bit frightening because of the fear of "unknown" given that we are doing very well on the current ISP where I have a number of other clients' sites running as well...kinda risking it all for that lil extra.

Thankyou all for contributing. I now know all the pros and cons that can be known beforehand .. will weigh them well before I do any thing.

Thanks
Jaski

[cabman]

We too have gone for the uk hosting option in similar circumstances, and so far so good.

Concerning the valid point of Yahoo uk and Aol uk omissions,
we have partly covered this by PPC, overture uk (aol uk) and espotting (yahoo uk) which is cheaper for our current low level of referrals than setting up another site.

One thing I discovered when looking at this issue was that our UK host would host another site and "point it" to the main site for 50 quid. Couldn't seem to get to the bottom of what this is all about.
Anybody know the pros and cons?