International Domain Question

[Athrilla]

I have a client who is having a debate on whether it is better to have all of their international sites on one domain or if it is better to have many country specific domains.

Examples:

One Domain
www.example.com/us
www.example.com/uk
www.example.com/fr
www.example.com/de

Many Domains
www.example.com (US)
www.example.co.uk
www.example.fr
www.example.de

There seems to be pros and cons for each. A site with one domain would be easier to update and maintain accross the board. The many domain method may make visitors feel more comfortable as the domain implies a local connection. The many domain method also may perform better on country specific search engines (Just a guess, I don't know this for sure).

Any insights, ideas, or suggestions on this topic will be much appreciated.

[encyclo]

As you said, there are pros and cons to each approach. Using ccTLDs is more work as you are creating separate sites for each country, but that can add a more local flavour to your presentation. You are right that it would help in terms of getting your local site into the appropriate country search results, but if, say, your UK ans US sites share a lot of content you risk problems with duplicate content.

Putting everything under one .com will give your site a more global flavour and you can have the advantage of being able to share cookies accross the whole site.

[John Carpenter]

In my opinion, duplicate content should not be a problem, provided that each site is written in a different language.

Also, it's possible to point all domain names to one physical server and have each site in a separate folder (which the visitor would not know about). That way it is easier to manage.

Domain names are cheap today, I would go with multiple TLDs. It will show you are a true, large, international corporation and that you care about your clients in all countries. Just look how short and neat these names are: www.sony.com, www.sony.de, www.sony.jp, etc.

Last but not least, people are more used to typing their national TLDs rather than .com. The only annoyance I see are the "two-part TLDs", such as .co.uk. Whoever invented them was not very smart.

[bill]

I'm in the local TLD camp. Given that engines like Google determine whether you're targeting the local country market by either local hosting within that country or a local TLD, it's pretty obvious which option is the easiest to implement.