Keyphrase ranking a geo-redirected site in Google

[Coolpink]

Hi all

This is the situation. I have a client who runs a number of ccTLD sites (all exact match brand name domains), including a .com which they use for the US.

This is a hair care product and due to Advertising Standards Authority (UK) restrictions, they cannot use a certain phrase to promote their products - 'hair loss' on the domain.co.uk site. However, in the US, there is no such restriction and can use wording this on the site.

A brand name search in google.co.uk brings up .co.uk as 1st result and .com as 2nd result, so the .com is indexed in google.co.uk. Any non-US user visiting domain.com will be redirected to their ccTLD site.

Here's my question - could I feasibly get the domain.com site ranking in google.co.uk for certain 'hair loss' based keyphrases, considering the fact that I can mention it in the copy on there but not on the domain.co.uk site. Would I need to remove any Geographic Target in the WMT account for domain.com?

Or is this a form of Google cloaking and could see the site penalised?

Thanks

[Dr-Pete]

It's not against Google guidelines for two of your domains to rank for one query - as long as what Google sees for those domains matches what users see, that's permitted and wouldn't be considered cloaking. I can't speak to the UK legal aspects, of course.

Whether it's a a good idea or not is a bit tougher to answer. If your removed geo-targeting and your two sites seemed to have very similar English-language content, it's possible they could compete with each other in unexpected ways or that one could get filtered out. Typically, if that happens, Google will filter out the .com in the Google.co.uk searches, so, at worst, you'd be back where you started. I don't think it's a big risk - just something to keep your eyes open about. If ranking both lets you hit some terms that you couldn't otherwise, their may be a business advantage. I'd just monitor the SERPs closely and make sure you don't encounter side effects.

The only thing I would warn about is don't try to trick Google into thinking the .com is the UK site or vise-versa. If Google naturally shows both and that lets you target different keywords, that's fine.

[ATMOSMarketing56]

You could just rel="canonical" to all the US pages you want to out-rank the UK pages.