Forum

[daveyace]

which domain should i buy? im in uk and if i buy .co.uk will it be harder to rank in global search results?

 

[jmpruitt]

.co.uk are best if you are going for local UK listings. If you want global rankings, best is .com then .net or .org after that are the best bet.

 

[johnalex157]

No.. I dont agree with jmpruitt... In fact my website has .co.uk but my website is visible to whole world for particular keywords... ultimately it depends on where your server is placed and what is the content of your website.... I have visitors from united states as well... so stop worrying about the name and ext and concentrate on content....

 

[daveyace]

i have a site that is .co.uk and for some keywords it is on page 1 on google uk and not anywhere near on google.com and i know a lot of people in the uk use google.com in the uk. so im still not sure because i don't just want to target the uk because i want as many visitors as possible

 

[michellerana]

All domains can be accessed globally but country domain extensions (like .us, .de, .uk) rank much better locally. It's harder for sites with country based extensions to rank well internationally. You won't usually find a .uk domain in search results.

 

[daveyace]

thanks michellerana that helps a lot i think i will go with .com

 

[elink]

Do your market research and demographics to find out where most buyers in your market are located and buy a relevant domain extension. You can use tools like quantcast and google insights to do your market research

 

[clarafaie]

if you have the option to get both TLDs then do so and redirect the co.uk domain to the .com domain. this will ensure that nobody in your homebase grabs the co.uk domain and take the traffic that could go to your .com site. many people register all possible TLDs for their chosen domain, i.e., chosendomain.com, chosendomain.net, chosendomain.org, chosendomain.co and so on, specially if it's a "brand" domain.

 

[pauls_pad2002]

if you did your reading of marks weekly videos you would see that he suggests dot com sites

 

[Davidoff]

Davey, your question resembles sth where I had to go through a lot of pain, being in UK as well.

I partly support John, and I have staggering evidence to do so:

The server location seems(!) to dominate every other factor - although that's sad, cause it shouldn't!

My evidence is based on around 100 sites I own. Unfortunately, many sites "naturally" target the UK market, but sadly, all my sites so far are hosted in Chicago.

I could write a whole book about this, but to make it short: If you want sites to rank well INTERNATIONALLY, host them in the US. If you want UK sites to rank well in UK, by all means host them in the UK.

Only thereafter, yes, use com or org for INTERNATIONAL sites, and co.uk for UK sites.

Also, note my other post (re/ Amazon), if you target international customers, you may have to sign up with local vendors AND offer your visitors the RESPECTIVE link to purchase, or you won't get credit for sales.

And NO, Google automatically gives us in the UK the google.co.uk site (per geo-targeting). Hardly anyone goes in their Google account and changes the standard setting - most people don't even have a google account!

For Firefox there's a great plugin "Google Global" that allows you to see any search results easily in any other local google search engine. So, at the click of a button I can switch between google.co.uk results and say, google.com results. But again, none of your visitors will use that to find you more easily. ;-)

Finally, to put some meat to it: Of my .com sites that content-wise target the UK, NONE ranks well in the UK or in the US! But of my .com sites that content-wise target the US, quite a few rank on page 1 in Google.com (without any backlinking whatsoever!) but again rank badly in Google.co.uk (say, #278 etc). Once again: With my server being in the US, I have NO site that ranks well in Google.co.uk!! Of dozens and dozens!

 

[badal4u]

Always go for .com domains, as they are remembered easily, and never think that if you target co.uk as domain extension, you will get higher listing in UK. It all depends on your seo efforts.

 

[luckylook3]

if you want to rank global than use dot com. also more people will visit your site if they will see a dot com domain becuase uk fdomain they will think it dont present them relevant information if they live at other country.

 

[n0thsa]

Definitely .com mate.
James nailed it on the head at the start.

 

[mythicus]

you could use co.uk to rank for something in the uk that you're having trouble ranking globally with a .com. matt carter wrote a blog post that somewhat touches on this subject.

 

[rankwarrior]

i usually have both, then use a redirect.

 

[Waken]

Well, if you're targeting the international market, always go for .com.

 

[Spudster]

i would go with .com or if you want a f ree domain name i recomend tryintg co.cc therelet you register a free domain for 1 year

 

[bahamabaz]

I have over 200 .co extensions and about 50 websites and am based in UK but I get traffic Worldwide so I think it matters not a lot.

 

[WebhostUK]

If you are looking to Host in UK , I will suggest you to go for .Co.UK and .com domain both. This will confirm your global presence as well.

 

[Coopling]

A global audience looks for a .com. Not to say that .co.uk is a bad thing, but customers tend to think it's for a small local business. The same holds true for any of the other country specific domains, .us, .in., .br, etc.

 

[JJPerkins]

In our experience both server location and tld come into the equation to a degree.

For sites targeting the usa we use "standard" US based hosting, and buy the .com .org etc.
For sites going after our local UK audience we use UK based servers, and buy .co.uk.

Ranking a .com in the UK isn't too difficult though, the server location seems to play the biggest part.
Of course there's a lot more to it with your on and off page SEO. We've had our UK sites accidentally also rank well globally, and a lot of our US hosted .coms rank well in Goog uk without doing anything special.

 

[nberry]

What is your web site geared toward for? If you are targeting to rank higher on the global ranking, then I suggest that you go with .com but if your page is just applicable to your local area, then go for something with a .uk on it. That would help you be known in your own network and results would be more applicable to customers in your area.

 

[aditd]

If you only go for the uk market ... then co.uk.
If you go world wide ... then .com

You can always take them both!