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Would actual descriptions of a location around 250 words long be seen and penalised as duplicate content? Yes.  If that is the majority of page content. Also is there a possible way to canonicalise this content so that Google can see it relates back to our original site? Yes, if the duplicate pages had rel="canonical" applied as described here... http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=139394 The problem with that is the webmasters who own the partner sites would have to apply this to their pages (if you don't have control) and some of them will realize that your goal is to discredit their pages.

Ah, I see where you are coming from. There is room to manoeuvre with multi-national domains (.net etc), however it's when you go into specific country TLD's that you will struggle to pull UK rank. I guess it depends how big a part of your marketing plan SEO is. Like I mentioned, it's certainly possible to rank one of these domains, but it is a uphill battle and if you're relying on SEO for income then I'd  recommend against. From a branding perspective, I can see the potential benefit of one of these domains. Thanks, David

I've noticed loads of this since Penguin, I think their hope is to catch out as many people as possible until folks catch on that it really doesn't work anymore and does more harm than good. Unfortunately while there are people out there who don't understand the right way to do things there will always be someone trying to make money from the wrong way to do it. Steve