What's best for UK - .com or .co.uk?

[DanielCoe]

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Hi,

I have a domain name in both .com and .co.uk versions.

The .com IP location is in the US
The .co.uk IP location is in the UK

Am I better off placing my UK content on the .co.uk site in terms of users in the UK prefering to go a .co.uk?

Will UK search engines like my site better if the UK content is on the .co.uk with a UK IP location?

I do want to cater for both US and UK markets.

Or does it not matter if I put UK content on both .co.uk and .com?

What would you do?

Thanks

Daniel

[ianm]

The .co.uk will do better on the UK version of Google - particularly as it's hosted in the UK.

If you stick the UK content on the .com them it won't show up if someone searches with the UK option on Google UK.

That said, if you've got the space it might be worth putting some UK content on the .com as well - some UK customers might end up there.

[sandman]

I have a .com which targets US customers but is hosted in the UK. Will this affect its positions on Google and should I move the hosting?

thanks

[talk4]

I have a .com hosted in the UK that gets more US traffic than I would like so it obviously is still listed in US, as well as UK, results. That said, if I was targeting the US I would host there, no good reasons not to!

[peterb]

It is worth bearing in mind that lots or us go to sites using the name/ctrl/enter function. This takes you directly to the .com - not .co.uk

[Dynamoo]

I host almost all my sites in the UK, including the US-orientated ones. Especially for product sites it's very easy to accidentally pick up UK traffic this way, but it lands on a site with only US products.

In these cases I just stick a little flag on with "UK visitors click here" which sends them to a UK merchant with a similar product range. Useful for scraping up those last bits of revenue

[DanielCoe]

Hi,

Thanks for your replies.

What if the .com domain name location is in the US, but the hosting is in the UK?

Does that make a difference?

Will say, Google see it as a US address or a UK address?

Daniel

[Dynamoo]

Google works on the IP address of the server and works out the location from that - not from the contact information. I think it also autmatically counts in any .co.uk address as being in the UK too.