Duplicate content on the one domain (related to country targetting)

[E2E]

Hi - We have a client who has a TLD that they wish to target several markets using

• .com/au
• .com/us
• .com/sg

Each will use duplicate content with slight variations to cater for the local market (spelling, industry jargon).  They seem reluctant to register a TLD for each target market (which was our suggestion) and I am wondering what SEO penalties would apply for having a majority of duplicate content on the same domain – perhaps using subdomains would be better? Thanks!

[Gyorgy]

You can set geotargeting in Google Webmaster tools. Subdirectories with a gTLD is a supported solution and duplicate content shouldn't be an issue; however, we have had canonical problems with English pages across .com, .co.uk and .com.au ccTLDs.

Google claims that they're smart enough to understand that your subdirs are for different countries but I'd strongly recommend changing the content as much as possible. Use different spellings, sentence structure, etc, let the client know that it's also better for visitors to see customised content rather than a general marketing copy.

You can read more about the Webmaster Tools settings here: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=182192#2

[E2E]

Thanks so much for the detailed response and directing me to the google page - really appreciate it.