I noticed around 12 months ago that all the .co.uk sites I worked on (previously ranking fabulously in the .co.uk searches (searching the web). Then, Google did something. I suddenly noticed lots of (mainly) US sites ranking above these .co.uk's. While I realise there's no exact science to do this, in every example it's almost as if a .co.uk is somewhat penalised, or weighted less over the .com's. The SEO is better in each case- natural links, excellent content, superb presentation that Google likes. I've seen very spammy sites (putting the keyphrase in the title 6 times!) rank above some of the .co.uk's I work on. I've seen .com's rank above .co.uk's where they have little to absolutely no relevance whatsoever to the keyphrase. Am I barking up the wrong tree here, or can anyone shed any light? The reason I ask is because the next consideration is moving .co.uk's I work on to .com's for just this reason. TYA
I've read that a .com doman does have more weight yes. If yo use 'just pages from the UK' that problem isn't there
Google sees .com as a universal domain ending whereas a .co.uk or co.au is viewed as domain more suitable to the country it represents. I believe that it is safer and more beneficial to go for .com in all sites that you wish to develop.
Thanks Not really, because most UK searchers don't bother to turn the "Uk only" facility on unless they don't find specifically what they are getting. Currently the .com's are parked on top of the .co.uk's. A few opinions: 1) the .co.uk's are currently paked on top of the .com's. If I swap that over, how is Google likely to react? 2) All our backlinks point at the .co.uk's. Will the PR / serps be passed over if we swap over? Should we have any backlinks we can, changed? Thanks for the advice so far.
You can look in Webmaster tools under "Set language" to see what Language Google as selected for you. You might be able to change.