I think i am ready to expand my site from .co.uk to a more broad and global .com audience.

How would i do that with least possible disturbance to PR, alexa and pages indexed?

Thanks

This:
Buy the .com domain and have it point to the same files as the .co.uk domain (Therefor using both domains)
Or:
Buy the .com domain and have the .co.uk domain redirect to the .com

Then update your sitemap and resubmit to Google/Yahoo

How would i do that with least possible disturbance to PR, alexa and pages indexed

Don't change it

Originally Posted by Decaf

This:
Buy the .com domain and have it point to the same files as the .co.uk domain (Therefor using both domains)
Or:
Buy the .com domain and have the .co.uk domain redirect to the .com

Then update your sitemap and resubmit to Google/Yahoo

Would google not penalise me for duplicate content?

http://www.webmaster-talk.com/the-go...e-content.html

I dont see any advantage in switching, but if you really want to do it, move all your content to the .com domain and use HTTP redirects (status code 301 to indicate that the content has move permanently).
You should use the http redirects for every individual page, not a global redirect to the new home page.

Or just have the .co.uk domain go to a separate folder on your web server, and in that is a .htaccess with the 301 redirect.

you need to do a 301 redirect, which means moved permanently. When google follows that it will move your old PR to the new domain. I did that many times and it works. just have to give 3-4 weeks.

not sure about alexa though.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

Don't change it

Why do you recommend not changing it? Because it would take more time to get indexed again?

Yep, been there and changed hostnames and/or TLDs and seen the disruption it creates. Long established sites never seem to acquire the same status.

Going from a .co.uk to a .com could also be disastrous for UK results unless you are hosted on UK IPs. In which case the .com results would be somewhat diminished.
None of this is quantifiable of course, because you will never know what or how much effect the current setup is having.

Added to this is the global market place is going to be much, much more competitive. So what works well for a smaller, more focused marketplace is going to be totally ineffective when applied to pages that are fighting for a place in one that is a hundred times (or more) competitive.

I wonder if they'll ever do a .dot, and then someone can get dot.dot.dot

or even

dot.dot---dot.dot

So it sound like you just want to have the .com go to the same folder as the .co.uk does.

Originally Posted by chrishirst

or even

dot.dot---dot.dot

wait a minute, it's a morse code reference!

that says SOS - I didn't notice that before. 3 dots, 3 dashes, 3 dots.

nice.

I have never seen such domain names or ideas. Nice