I'm about to launch a new site and have spent the last couple of months getting UK backlinks set up for when I launch. The site is a jobs site mainly for the UK creative, graphics & web design industries and I have the .com, .co.uk, .net, .info etc.

The hosting company is in the US due to the better deals with bandwidth and I'd originally set up the site under the .com domain with all the others parked but with what looks like Google's new geo-targeting I wasn't showing up in their UK searches due to the US hosts and use of a .com domain. (I've tried a couple of UK hosts but even with no-one knowing about the site and using up the bandwidth the servers kept going down! In the end I went on some personal recommendations and opted for a US host.) I knew nothing about the geo-targeting.

To counter this I've used .htacces & a 301 redirect for every conceivable variation of the domains to point to the full .co.uk (with the www, without the www etc).

The problem is that I'd already set up google webmasters with the .com domain, uploaded the site map and started to get indexed.

Do I keep this account and set up a new .co.uk one under "My Sites", or do I delete it and start again with the UK version? Or do I keep both up? Don't want to get banned for tricks and duplicate content etc.

I amended the sitemap with new .co.uk urls but google wasn't having any of it - hitting me with errors as it was a different domain suffix.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

the site is at http://www.thejobhopper.co.uk

Well it doesn't 404; that's a good thing. Also your 302s are working.

I would probably add you .co.uk site to the Webmaster Tools control panel. Google ( and the others ) will sort this all out in time. The redirects make it clear you aren't trying to pull a fast one. Also, forget the site maps, and let Google discover the new domain through the redirects, or new links.

I have two domain names pointing to my site, and my own story about growing pains here. Once I learned to use .htaccess to redirect the old domain to the new one, it was a matter of weeks before Google acted like the old domain never existed. The other engines aren't important enough for me to know how they're doing with this.

Google doesn't like redirects so be careful. If you are a UK based website does it not make sense to us the .co.uk as the main domain. I think your spending to much time & money with domains and location. Google doesn't really care about where your website is hosted. Google cares about the website in general such as, content, back link etc etc. You should be focusing on building your website and getting it up and running rather then weather or not to use a .co.uk. .com ..net etc. your just wasting time & money - because if you want this website to work in gotta spend alot of money on advertising and getting traffic.

Also if you going to be a business, shouldnt you be hosting in the UK so you can compile with UK laws, such as data protection etc, other wise you gotta compile with UK & U.S laws.

Google doesn't like redirects so be careful.

Rubbish.

Google doesn't really care about where your website is hosted.

For localised results, it does matter. And it's the same with using an appropriate TLD.

If you are hosted in the UK (with a UK IP) , it won't matter if you use a gTLD. You will still be included in local results.
Hosting in the US (or outside the UK, or UK based but with non UK IP ) you will have to use the .co.uk ccTLD to see local results.

By local I mean google.co.uk with the UK only rad button checked.
Localised results ( town/county/country + keyphrase ) is a different issue.