Help Needed - 301 a .co.uk to a .com Serp Questions

[goody2shoes]

Hey, really need some help deciding what to do...

I have a .co.uk site, its my oldest and best site of my network and accounts for maybe 30-40% of my income. Although its a .co.uk site, it actually makes most of its from from USA traffic and targets many terms for the US market - but the problem is that due to it being a .co.uk it doesnt rank as well in G .com and over the last few years Google has defiantly widened the gap as such for the ability for a .co.uk to rank in G .com.

Many terms that I used to be #1 for in G .com, I now rank position 5-10 only, but in G .co.uk I'm #1 and often with a duo listing so I wouldnt put the loss of rankings in G .com down to just losing rankings naturally. Now many of my key pages are gradually losing rankings in G .com which is not good and really frustrating

Feedback Needed

So my dilemma is do I risk my best site and 301 it to a .com hosted in the US for potential at a guess 50% increase in revenues and more future potential (If the 301 worked well and got some US rankings back - Im sure longtail would increase lots too) ?

If people with experience with 301ing sites to a new domain could let me know how they did or if you're an SEO and have done this many times, how many times on average has Serps remained stable / unchanged ?

Trying to work out the reward to risk ratio, like on average if the transition is seamless 90% of the time it would seem worth the gamble, but if its 50% then I would say its not worth it.

[stevenmusumeche]

I'd go for the 301 since you truly are targeting American customers. Be prepared for a couple month period of bad results while the 301 takes effect.