.com Versus .co.uk in Yahoo/Google UK

[suniln]

My first post here.

I have a UK site for which we have the .com and .co.uk domains (the .co.uk points to the same site as the .com). We have always pushed the .com name and most links and search engines have the .com domain. I now find that on Yahoo Uk (there are probably others) if you search for UK sites then our .com site is filtered out.
Is there any chance of promoting the the .co.uk in Google (and others) without it being regarded as spam?
One suggestion I have had is to set up the .co.uk with different content - I am hoping for an easier alternative as I dont want to spend even more money getting the .co.uk into directories & search engines.
Any suggestions very much appreciated.

[robwatts]

Hi Suniln:hi: welcome to the forums

Yes Ive heard of this happening too. Its a difficult one as ultimately you should only be promoting one domain.

Many uk companies bought .coms back in the boom days (and some still are!)

I think its a little unfair of yahoo and google to filter by domain extension as like youve just pointed out, many uk companies bought .com extensions ignorant of how google or yahoo would act in the future.

In fairness to yahoo.com et al, if you consider that the majority of .coms are owned by US companies, and that they have a duty to their respective country resident portal users to provide on target relevant content, then its understandable that they do what they are doing.

Perhaps you should make representations to them highlighting the weaknesses of their policy.

Sorry I cant offer anything concrete for you, perhaps someone else might be able to help you further.

Good luck.

[suniln]

Thank you for your comments. Google appears to use a different criteria from Yahoo as Google UK does list our site even though it is a .com. There is obviously a more sophisticated method for determining whether a site is US/UK (based on the ISP's location?)

[stevew]

(based on the ISP's location?) That's exactly my understanding

[ophirc]

Hey-
You should try ptting the domains on different IP's, yet to use the same data, or even to share only the same database and general info - for all regional matters use specific pages so you will gain 2 websites for the price of one, you won't be a spammer and you will be listed both in UK and USA/International.

It's a bit tricky to design, but once you draw your "map" you will see it's not SO complicated to design and maintain.

Regards to the countru origin identification, I wouldn't count on ISP since a site can be UK originated and hosted in US or France.

If I were a search engine (odd...) I'd try to find an algo that determines the country by finding the contact page and extracting the country (if applicable) - anyway it's relevant only to sites with both local and international domains.

[suniln]

Thank you for your suggestion. Sounds like a very good idea. I will definitely investigate this option further
:cheers: