How to create a copy of a site for a different market / country

[oliflorence]

Hi,
We have a client located in Ireland that has recently opened a new branch in the UK in London.
We have just redonne their site for the Irish market on an established domain and this is working fine but they would like a dedicated site for the UK on a .co.uk domain name. The domain is the same except for the extension.
The design would stay the same but some of the products and services which all have a page each would vary slightly, some being on offer in the UK and not in Ireland and vice versa. Obviously things like the address and numbers would change but that's about it

This seems like a perfectly legitimate request but the concern now is that the search engines may penalise the new site for content duplication.

Could anyone tell me what the best practices are in this case. This is actually the third time we are asked the same thing by various companies.

Is there a way to let Google know for instance that it is the same company but different markets through webmaster tools for instance?

 

[mneylon]

This has come up here a few times in the past (check the archives .. )

I assume, though I don't know, that Google links sites / domains via their Webmaster tools accounts ie. if they're all on the same one and using the same GA account etc., they see a link

 

[blue4ever]

Here’s the take on ‘duplicate content’:


There’s no real penalty. G decides, based on a number of factors, which page/site to display first, second third etc. If you’re in IRE, G inherently will display Irish Sites, unless the search specifies differently – it’s called Task Location.

If you have a site here selling Dog Accessories and somebody searched “dog collars” – the likelihood if the UK site appearing is low (in the first X page anyway). I’d be of the opinion that if you made changes to the UK site, including some info, prices, contact info etc – that would be enough to suggest that you’re not trying to game the search engines.
GWT will, automatically, see the UK site as one targeting the UK because of its TLD and treat that site and a UK site slugging it out with all the other UK Dog Accessories sites**

I’d use a different analytics code (you could use a roll up code for combining visits analysis)


C


** I always wonder how businesses in Northern Ireland get on with Geo Targeting, - eg, can you be competitive in Tyrone with and .ie. I do note that Google says “Your site's domain is currently associated with the target: Ireland” – one would assume that are politically correct and the .ie target is the ‘island’ and that the .co.uk covers NI as well…

 

[oliflorence]

Thanks guys. Did not find much in the archives I am afraid.

Blue4ever, I think you could be well right and i think this is the way I will have to go