International Domain and URL Method of Preference

[Cuker]

I'm seeing varied opinions and methods preferred for domain/URL structure on international websites. A specific example we have now is an international brand in Asia, USA, Brazil/South America, Australia, New Zealand and Africa. Their current domains are all fragmented across the brand and our goal is to have them unified, examples of their issue here;

country.brand.com 
www.brand.com.au
www.brand.co.nz

What I'm looking for is an approach that will have the best long term impact but no short term losses as well.

I'm leaning toward www.brand.com.eu or www.brand.com/eu/

Looking at SERP's for other countries, subdomain geographic segmenting doesn't seem to show on any first pages in the SERPs.  There is one other option I'm still interested in finding out more about, geographically segmenting sites and pages through canonical or hreflang.

Interested in hearing some additional POV's.

Thanks!

Anthony

[irvingw]

One main .com site with language folders is the best way to go. Easier to maintain, better for SEO to have one enterprise sites, shows the user you are global.

You need to deal with duplicate content by writing same language regions differently which is the pain about international sites.

[Cuker]

Thanks for the input Irving.