How To Internationalize - Big Question

[dexm10]

Hi all,

Here is a big question.

We have a long-established good content website with a .co.uk domain. The site is UK focussed.

However, we are planning a new feature which will be UK and worldwide.

So do we:

1. Keep it all on our .co.uk ?

2. Put the non-UK parts on a .com domain ?

We don't have any content as such for a separate domain, and are not planning any.

But, we are not sure if for example US users would be unimpressed with a UK domain. We could fudge it with "co.uk/us" etc.

(Notice how we have not mentioned Google. Fed-up chasing big G the whole time. We just want to concentrate on our users and the service we provide to them. But G remains the elephant crapping in the corner of the room.)

Also, we are asking this question before we let our developers and designers get to work. Basically we value Moz community opinions over and above theirs.

Realise this is a big question, but you have big brains.

Please chip in.

[Andy.Drinkwater]

Ignoring everything else (elephants included), from a users point of view, if someone is in the US and sees content on a UK domain, they are less likely to click on it.

I would go down the route of a .com and then find content to make it worthwhile.

You also don't need to wonder where best to point GWT - UK or US. From a positioning point in the SERPs, remember that a .com is generic whilst a .co.uk is UK-centric. Even if it was a part of a .co.uk, I don't know how well it would rank in the US. There are so many factors to take into consideration.

Andy