Hello all, First - thanks to all who read and reply to this post. Our company website has an australian version of our main site (basically an exact copy but one is a .com and the other is a .com.au. The sites have mirrored content. We rank well but when we goto www.google.com.au and click on the "australian only sites" we dont rank. My guess is because we have duplicate content (its not intentional for ranking purposes - we are entering the Australian market and wanted to be localized). The australian site is about five months old though with really no back links. Our tech team asked us to do a 301 redirect from our .com.au site to .com site. This would be fine or work out? (i.e. the serp result would show the .com.au site but when clicked it would goto to the .com site?)- BUT would we show up in the radio button "australian only sites" results pages? We did not want to build out an entirely new site with unique content just for Australia. So not sure if the 301 redirect idea would work as it may ignore the .au site and not even list it in the radio button AU only site search. Another question is- is there any information on how prevalent that radio button search tool is used? I can undrestand that for advanced or extremely localized searching it would be useful - but it is another click for the user to do - so they probably ignore it? I have done research but cant find any good info regarding how much that radio button is used. I just dont want to have to manage an entirely different .au site and a .com site with different content..i was thinking link build to the .com.au site and 301 it to the .com and MAYBE?? the .com.au site would show up in the "radio button-search results on googles australian version". Any thoughts/comments would be helpful - and thanks!
Nope .com would show up. The 301 would basically transfer whatever backlinks .com.au has gained and probably boost .com by alittle too. The radio button works by domain name, registration info AND server location. I'm guessing you are hosted in AU so the radio button shouldnt be affected at all and you should be fine. If you arent hosted in AU than the only reason you showed up in the AU radio button search was because of the domain name. If you 301 redirect .com.au to .com and arent hosted in AU than you will most likely loose that. On a side note: If you are entering the AU market than you really should have a website geared towards AU users. Not having a .com.au domain name doesnt prevent you from entering the AU market. My business does business all over the world and we stick with .com just because everyone knows it. If your not going to edit the site just for AU users than there is no reason to have a .com.au It just makes SEO and branding difficult. You can always create a mini site and ask the user to pick their country from the homepage and redirect them to a AU focused site similar to http://www.bmw.com/ Also last I checked on a small percentage of users only use the radio buttons because the main search also includes country specific sites (ex: google.co.uk will display more co.uk sites in the regular search) When people shop they want to search for ALL online retailors and not ones just based in their country.