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Hi,

I would leave them as "follow" ---- and don't see why search engines should have an objection to that.

Personally, I think it is very much part of the 'search + social' integration that is the in-thing currently.

Manoj

Thanks.

Thank you, Gianluca. Your detailed response is much appreciated.

Would you be able to give any indication on the time it could take for the sub-domain to get all the search traffic directly for queries originating in that country?

Any case studies or references you will be able to point me to?  That'd be great.

Thank you for your response; it's helpful.

By any chance, are you able to point me to any case study that shows the time it took for the geo-targeted sub-domain to get all the traffic directly from the search engines?

Our concern with using a new TLD is the time it will take the domain to acquire authority and attract traffic of its own from the targeted geography.

For a client of ours, we are likely to create a sub-domain that is to be targeted at a specific country.

Most of the content on this sub-domain will be from the main site, although with some specific differentiation to suit that geographic market.

We intend to tell Google through Webmaster Centre that the sub-domain is targeted at a specific country. Some questions:

a) Any idea how long it could take before google gives precedence to the content in this sub-domain for queries originating from that particular country?

b)  What is the likely impact of content duplication ? What extent of differentiation is necessary from a search engine perspective?

Thanks.

Thanks, Gareth.

Yes, we are evaluating the different options, including the sub-domain/ separate folder one, though the option we really want to go for (primarily due to business considerations) is the one I've described above. Any more thoughts/ ideas will certainly be appreciated.

I had previously asked this as a 'private question' and couldn't make it a 'public question' automatically-- hence reposting it as a new question:

We have an existing site, let's say www.xyz.com --- which attracts traffic from all over the world (including the US), though it's primary audience is the UK/ Europe. Most of this traffic is via organic search results on Google.

Now, there is a business case to launch a US-centric website -- www.xyz.us, which will have most of its content from the original site (probably with some localization).

Our goal is that on day 1 when the new site xyz.us is launched, we want all traffic originating from the US (and may be some other North American countries) to be directed to the .us domain instead of the .com domain.

We don't want to lose any search engine traffic; equally importantly, we want this to be done in a manner that is seen by the search engines as a legitimate technique.

What are the best options to do this such that the new .US site automatically inherits all of the traffic from the .com site on day 1, without either of these sites getting penalized in any form.

Thanks.