What's better for UK rankings? - .com or .co.uk

[paulie555]

We've been running our site on a dot com domain name since we launched at the start of this year. Our rankings for specific keywords are much better on google.com than .uk. We also own the co.uk domain, and have been advised to switch the site to that so as to better our rankings here in the UK.

Just wondering if others have had any experience of this, and if it's bettered their rankings?

[DarrenSpink]

The domain doesn't matter through my experience, what does matter is if you are looking for 'UK business' to make sure your web hosting is located in the UK.

[jont]

If you sell largely in the UK then the .co.uk is arguably better as it can provide an instant nod to where you are based and may help with filtered searches on Google et al... as Darren points out location of hosting is equally important.

[RuralWeb]

IMO it is vital that you are on a .co.uk and uk hosting

[Darren B]

google recognises regional domains and hosting more than other SE and lets be honest they are pretty much the leaders these days.

[jont]

If you do change to the .co.uk ensure you get all your redirects working correctly so any hard work made on the .com is transferred in the right direction.

[Duncan Rounding]

You can also tell Google your preferred domain.

[Mike Hughes]

You can also tell Google your preferred domain.

Which is pretty much what I was going to say at the start. Having a .co.uk domain won't necessarily improve your rankings but it will make sure that your site is included in the UK serps index.

In my opinion the hosting location is not nearly as important as the domain name, but I'm sure it does help if you use a non-specific domain. Looking at Google's 'Set geographic target' webmaster tool, it tells me by default that my .co.uk domains are:

Your site's domain (.UK) is already associated with the country/region: United Kingdom


and doesn't give any option to change them. This should be proof enough that having a .co.uk domain is sufficient on it's own for google to allocate the results to the Uk index (and my hosting is in Germany).

I would also agree with Duncan. If your website is already established and doing well in the serps on a .com domain then it's going to be easier, and less likely to lead to problems, if you just use Googles webmaster tools to tell it your website is targeted at the UK. Redirects can get messy and lead to unintended problems.

Mike

[paulie555]

I would also agree with Duncan. If your website is already established and doing well in the serps on a .com domain then it's going to be easier, and less likely to lead to problems, if you just use Googles webmaster tools to tell it your website is targeted at the UK. Redirects can get messy and lead to unintended problems.

I've already told G this months ago, and still no change.

You can also tell Google your preferred domain.

How do I do this? I can't see how in webmaster tools.

[DarrenSpink]

preferred domain, do you mean tell Google to use www or not www:


Display URLs as www.domain.co.uk (for both www.domain.co.uk and domain.co.uk)

Display URLs as domain.co.uk (for both www.domain.co.uk and domain.co.uk)

Don't set an association.