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Just for the record, we decided to continue with two domains, localized .com and localised .co.uk. They will no longer be maintained on different continents - Google says host location is no longer important - but will be run as two wpmu sites.

For us, the pros and cons outlined in all answers below came down to - we were concerned that our good UK rankings would be affected, and the work of maintaining two near identical sites did not seem too onerous.

href_lang sitemaps remain a problem - what a nightmare that system is.

@Suvidit-Academy

Thanks again

@Suvidit-Academy Thanks. Some very sensible thoughts there.

What would you think if the redirect went the other way - from the .com to the .co.uk.

(As I said before, both websites are reasonable successful in their “home” Googles though the .co.uk is probably stronger.)

Hi I work for a British company which has two well established websites - a .co.Uk for the UK, and a .com for the US and rest of the world (in language directories). The Uk site is hosted in the Uk, the .com in US.

The websites do reasonable well in Google on both sides of the Atlantic. The company is a small but quite well known brand.

The company is now thinking of redirecting the .co.Uk to the .com as it would be cheaper to maintain.

What would you advise?

Thanks.

There are off-web considerations also, particularly if you choose to go for multiple domains.

There's the obvious one of the cost of running multiple link-building campaigns.

Then there's the question of what to do with printed materials. Are brochures/leaflets etc to be reprinted for each target market with the localised url? Or is there to be one main url with a country choice page? Which leads on to...

Another issue is what to do if you get one countries' customers on another countries' site (eg a UK visitor on say a US site). Do you redirect them? Or just hope they will notice the country links?

My experience is that there are loads of problematic ramifications. There's a lot of worry about whether to go for domains or subdomains or directories. But it's what happens afterwards that I have found really difficult.

That isn't much of an answer. But it is a warning that the best solution for seo can be quite hard to manage.

Hi I work for a British company which has two well established websites - a .co.Uk for the UK, and a .com for the US and rest of the world (in language directories). The Uk site is hosted in the Uk, the .com in US.

The websites do reasonable well in Google on both sides of the Atlantic. The company is a small but quite well known brand.

The company is now thinking of redirecting the .co.Uk to the .com as it would be cheaper to maintain.

What would you advise?

Thanks.