A global brand with localised microsites - distinct TLDs or directories by territory?

[Urbanfox]

Hello,

Looking to create an export site for a gobal brand and considering the benefits of distinct domains/TLDs vs. directories by territory.

I.e.

brand.fr vs. brand.com/fr for our French content
brand.ca/fr vs brand.com/ca/fr for our French Canadian content

Apple segregate their content by directory but we're not quite Apple to be fair...

Directory route would be technically cleaner but I don't wish to discount the SEO benefit of unique TLDs.

Any thoughts / considerations / similar experiences?

Thanks,

Jan

[AlanMosley]

Hi urban fox, i think we talked about a simular topic a while ago. I have got a bit more info lately from Matt Cutts.

If you have domains hosted in different countries, lets say .au and .uk with duplicate content, that is not a problem, but the sub directories with duplicate content is.

He did mentiion that you should have your dollar and pound sybols as well as date formats and teh like correct for each tld.

[SimonCullum]

Hi Urban Fox

That's a good answer from Alan.

There is a blog post at  http://www.seomoz.org/blog/geolocation-international-seo-faq  which is well worth a read. It's 2 1/2 years old however still very relevant.

Also, a Matt Cutts video worth a view can be found at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo

Regards

Simon