Does running a .com and .co.uk domain from the same website harm my Google ranking?

[JoePrice]

Hi

I've got an affiliate e-commerce site with a .co.uk domain. I then wanted to expand into the US market, so purchased a slightly different .com domain as well (my preferred choice wasn't available).

The content on the .com domain is the same as the .co.uk one where the only differences are the items listed for sale, their respective prices and the shops you can buy them from (as it targets US traffic instead of the UK). So there is only 1 web hosting account.

The .co.uk and .com domain are set to target different countries via google webmaster tools.

My question is, d'you think this set-up harming my Google search engine ranking for both sites?

Cheers

[suryak]

that wouldn't be harm full, but you have to use fresh content for both the website, or Search engines will treat you as mirror sites.

[dariussutherland]

im not sure but hat if you set different geo targets in eb tools for the site

[seork]

Hi

I've got an affiliate e-commerce site with a .co.uk domain. I then wanted to expand into the US market, so purchased a slightly different .com domain as well (my preferred choice wasn't available).

The content on the .com domain is the same as the .co.uk one where the only differences are the items listed for sale, their respective prices and the shops you can buy them from (as it targets US traffic instead of the UK). So there is only 1 web hosting account.

The .co.uk and .com domain are set to target different countries via google webmaster tools.

My question is, d'you think this set-up harming my Google search engine ranking for both sites?

Cheers

Don't use similar content otherwise it will generate duplicate content issue and would result in low rankings.

[EmilyParkinson]

Hey Joe,

if you are posting the exact same content on both websites, the one that gets crawled later won't rank due to duplicate content issue.

But so long as the content is different, you are good to go!

Also, you can post the same content and get traffic from other sources than SE rankings (paid traffic, etc.).

[amritrr]

My advice would be not to use separate domain for targeting different countries if you are relying on SEO to get traffic and sales. Promoting one site is hard enough, let alone two.

[Stevie D]

Google is pretty smart, and is perfectly capable of understanding that website.com, all about Website Inc. and with information about the company's American business, and website.co.uk, all about Website Inc. but with information about the company's UK business, are regional variants ... and so it will list the .com website for people it thinks are in the Untied States, and the .co.uk website for people it thinks are in Britain. You're unlikely to get duplicate content issues in that case.

[eBusinessiReader]

Not really.
We have not made ​​it into the multiple domains to spam.

Many reputable sites that can access the web in many domains.
It is not uncommon.

[JoePrice]

Great, thanks for the responses. Good food for thought!

[welcome_alexray]

Yes I agree most of them in the internet business use this kinda strategy; & I guess noting wrong with this.

[Rawebmaster]

Running the same website (same content) on .com and .co.uk domain would definitely harm your rankings. You said that .com domain is slight different from .co.uk domain, right. It would be better if you use different content on both the websites otherwise search engine would treat them as mirror sites and lower down the rankings.

[Stevie D]

Running the same website (same content) on .com and .co.uk domain would definitely harm your rankings. You said that .com domain is slight different from .co.uk domain, right. It would be better if you use different content on both the websites otherwise search engine would treat them as mirror sites and lower down the rankings.

It isn't always practical to have different content on the websites. If you run a global company, what you want to say to customers/stakeholders in the US is going to be broadly the same as in the UK. You can't and you shouldn't rewrite the whole website just so there's no duplicate content. I still maintain that Google is smart enough to figure out internationalised websites.