Welcome to the Q&A Forum

Hi Urban Fox That's a good answer from Alan. There is a blog post at  http://www.seomoz.org/blog/geolocation-international-seo-faq  which is well worth a read. It's 2 1/2 years old however still very relevant. Also, a Matt Cutts video worth a view can be found at  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo Regards Simon

Thanks Steve - very useful. Jan

Not strictly no, we may have to compromise by losing a degree of control over the content. Thanks for the response Damien, very helpful. Jan