I have a question:
As an example, suppose I had a website where you can buy British Tea. Also, that the only keywords used by people are 'british tea' and that 90% of searches for 'british tea' are made by people within the UK.

Now, if I do a search for 'web design', for example, on google.co.uk and google.com, with google.co.uk preference seems to be given to UK sites. Seeing as my site will be visited mainly by UK people, should I definitely get a .co.uk domain, seeing as google seems to take preference for UK sites for searches made from google.co.uk? (the domain could be called britishteas.co.uk). Or, would I get better results with britishteas.com because .com might give me a superior ranking over .co.uk domains?


I'd appreciate it if anyone could help me with my decision

It shouldn't make any difference what your domain is.

What will let you get UK targeted traffic is to host your site on a server located in the UK. I believe you will be more likely to show up on google.co.uk

For which audience (I mean country) are your site for?

The UK mainly

use uk domain names to target uk people. your webste will get a better search listing on google.co.uk than google.com .

I don't think it will. As far as i understand it the TLD extension isn't used at all when delivering country specific results. Only the location of the server is used to decide what country a site is based in.

Probably co.uk it only seems resonable that if you're selling a british product to british people you should use a .uk domain.

.co.uk since your business aint going to be world wide.

Agree with atOx, co.uk will not mark your website as a British pages, and I don't think google can detect co.uk is a British website. You can host co.uk in United States. Google will decide a pages country by its IP or domain/server.

To get better ranking in google.co.uk, I think you shall get links from British based web pages.

I would buy both and redirect the .com to the .co.uk

and yes, buy hosting on a server from the UK

it doesn't matter for usual search (on google.com or google.co.uk) is it .com or .co.uk domain
BUT! for those who will seek on google.co.uk in the "pages from the UK" the .co.uk domain will DEFINITELY ranked higher or even on top if there will be no more .co.uk competitors.

It's not a naked words, right now i have few examples proving this (btw. they are hosted in US).

so my suggest is to get a co.uk or both com and co.uk

Why would google favour a uk site on a uk server rather than a uk site on a US server that sounds a bit stupid.

I thought the whole point of virtually every computer on the inernet being able to communicate through a mass of servers was suposed to make it so it didnt matter where it was stored it was all physically equal. and only the CONTENT affected if it gets listed in any particular search database.

Wow the net is really thick sometimes.

also it is often alot cheaper to get webspace on a US server just becasue the us is like 20X larger than the UK!.
....
Dan.

Google doesn't "favour" UK sites on UK IPs as a matter of course

UK IPs and .co.uk TLDs get a boost when Google user search on the .co.uk regional interface or rather it's the other way around NON UK IPs and other TLDs get filtered downwards

Have a read at this thread. http://www.highrankings.com/forum/in...showtopic=6585 some info is dated but Ian (McAnerin) does keep the articles on his site up to date where neccessary

I think if your consumers are mainly from the UK,maybe the co.uk is better;but if your clients are all from the world,maybe the .com is better.It is just my attitude,hope can have few effect in your problem.

Buy both .com and .co.uk and redirect .com to .co.uk, use php server and for redirection use .htaccess.Dont forget you should also redirect one page from .co.uk to .com site. This techniques is working for me well and good.

Note: All redirection should be made in server not in browser

Also Ip should be UK based

Best

What oif you had a Index page on a UK server (say a FREE one...), still have ur site on ur current server and set the domain to go to the UK based server with the page whch auto directs you to your site? do u get what i mean would this make google think that the whole site is uk?. because the domain would go to uk based server...

correct me if im wrong... praise me (IF) im right... LOL

Dan

Nope because if you redirected then the content would be somewhere else.

so... would that also mean if u did have you site on a UK server but alot of your content was embedded (or similar) into your site from another (us) server would the same apply?...

Dan