Duplicate Content Penalties, International Sites

[endlesspools]

We're in the process of rolling out a new domestic (US) website design.  If we copy the same theme/content to our International subsidiaries, would the duplicate content penalty still apply?  All International sites would carry the Country specific domain, .co.uk, .eu, etc.  This question is for English only content, I'm assuming translated content would not carry a penalty.

[HLennard]

The consensus is that even though the content is the same, that it will rank locally using country specific domains.  Can anyone provide examples where this is currently working?

[joseph.chambers]

I use rackspace | cloud sites. Is there a way I can request to have a domain pushed to a pool you have in UK or CA for example?

[andresgmontero]

This Video from Matt Cutts will help too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ets7nHOV1Yo

[Burgo]

I asked this exact question to Greg Grothaus from Google at a conference back in 2009, and his answer was that duplicated content across different TLDs should'nt be something to be too concerned about. Realistically, search engines will decide which version of the site is more relevant for a particular geographic audience.

[gfiorelli1]

When it comes to English... I just advice that there are ways to make "different" a content. Just think to how different Brits and Americans write many words. Then all the classic International SEO tactics (links for the country your site have to rank, IP, address...)

Apart that, if you have the international sites with their corresponding Tld (.co.uk, .au, .in...) and you specify that the .com is for the USA Google, actually Google is quite good in noticing what site should have to rank for any country.

[ninjamarketer]

Yes. Translated content will not be considered a penalty as long as long as you launch the site on a domain with proper local TLD and add locally targeted content then you should be ok. Additionally, you may want to consider hosting the website with a local hosting provider.

This should also apply to an English language content modified for UK audience since UK English is technically considered different than the US. We have multiple English language international websites hosted on local TLDs that rank locally for the respective keywords.

Google has become much smarter in terms of detecting the geo local elements and it should serve the appropriate site on the SERP without causing duplicate content issues.

[RodneyRiley]

I think this sort of duplicate content is something that Google sees often. If you are copying everything exactly between domains I’d question if you need multiple sites. Presuming your content has country specific differences you’ll be ok.

Do not forget to register in Google webmaster tools your target market for each URL. Maybe build some new links in each local at the time of launch (press mentions, twitter shout outs etc).

Also you may want to consider the approach taken by Microsoft. One domain with country specific folders e.g.

http://www.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx

http://www.microsoft.com/en/gb/default.aspx