29 replies to this topic

[Eschtruth Harrison]

I'm looking for information on marketing to the UK. We are a US based software company with a typical .com address like www.companyname.com. All optimization on the site currently uses American type keyword phrases. For UK users the site would need to be optimized for different phrases.

Is it advisable to have a physically separate site with a www.companyname.co.uk address? My assumption is by doing so we could appear in UK search results when the user specifies a UK only search (which I understand is typical of UK users).

Another thought would be to point www.companyname.co.uk to a page on our existing site that would be specifically optimized for the UK.

Any input is appreciated -EH

[mcanerin]

Hmmm, I just wrote an article on that. The readers digest version of it is that local searches look at the IP address, not the tld (ie .com or .uk) for local searches.

In short, you have to host it in the UK for it to show up on "local" searches, and it wouldn't matter much if it was .com or .uk to the SE.

I'd put up a separate site hosted in the UK (and make sure that the host is really in the UK, not just reselling services from Holland or the US). You really want to get a UK based IP address. Then, if practical, I'd use the .co.uk address for that site and make it separate from the main one.

Ian

[Eschtruth Harrison]

Can you have a UK hosted site without having a physical bricks & mortar address in the UK?

Also is there a link the full blown version of your article?

[OldWelshGuy]

Welcome EH,

Regarding the co uk domain name, you will be placed in the UK only search engines if your Hosting is a Uk IP without fail, I have .com net org etc all showing on uk only searches.

We (I live in the uk) are not really fussy about domain endings, although if you are running an ad campaign then it is best to use couk over com, most people i know will try either.

There are a few good hosting services in the uk, host Europe, (http://www.123reg.co.uk) will register a co uk for £6.09 2 years you can host with them for a few dollars a month literally $3-4 or you can use www.bpweb.net either of these will get you on the uk only searches.

If you are doing business in the uk, secure your couk domain name anyhow to avoid a passing off row.

The spelling is the key here , as we will always use the UK English spelling. It would be an impossible task to use both spellings, and retain credibility, so another page is essential, but it is how you use this page that is making me think.

You can not simply use it as a UK only front page with no links from you site, as it would then be an orphaned gateway page and would not score very highly.

To avoid causing offence, ie UK spelling on the front page, then US spelling internally, and to help with SEO, personally i would have a UK site, even if it was a mini site with info about the company product etc, I would also be sure to link both ways between the Com and couk frontpages as well.

[Eschtruth Harrison]

Thanks OldWelshGuy for the advice. We plan to be straight forward about being a US based company. We do already have users world wide including Canada and the UK. I like the idea of a mini site as we won't be offering our full product line in the UK. We'll include some type of obvious link between the UK site and the North American site and perhaps a different color (colour) scheme in case users move back and forth between sites. Most of the support related links will probably go back to the North American site. -EH

[mcanerin]

I didn't post the link to the article at first because I didn't want to look like I was being too self-promotional (and I haven't finished the rest of the articles yet) but here is the link:

Only in Canada, eh?

If anyone objects, I'll remove the link.

Ian

[Eschtruth Harrison]

Thanks for the informative article. Jill, if you're listening you should have Ian do a guest spot in the newsletter.

New question - what's considered the predominant browser in the UK? I know our site works well with IE, Netscape and Mozilla.

[Jill]

Welcome, EH.

Here's a funny coincidence for you. Ian actually IS the guest writer for today's newsletter!

Jill

[MarketPro]

What about marketing to the UK using PPCs, as anyone been successful with that? My scenario is this. I have a cosmetic surgeon that has found UK citizens will travel for his services. He has several International patients. He's based in the US and wants to market to the UK. Thoughts, comments?

[BrianR]

EH - the vast majority of browsers here in the UK are IE.

Laura - yes PPC works in the UK. I'm not personally into SEM so perhaps one of my UK colleagues who is involved with PPC would care to comment? I'd suspect that Google AdWords would be the best place to test.

BrianR

[MakeMeTop]

Whoa!!!!

What's all this about UK SEs basing regional listings on IP hosting regardless of the TLD? Sorry, but this is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong

Well, it is certainly untrue of the following somewhat popular sites who filter by .uk TLD (if UK only sites are selected) or get a ranking boost by .uk TLD and couldn't care less where you are hosted!

aol.co.uk
askjeeves.co.uk
altavista.co.uk
bbc.co.uk
freeserve.co.uk
msn.co.uk
lycos.co.uk
hotbot.co.uk
tiscali.co.uk
yahoo.co.uk

Test it out. Go to Yahoo UK, select UK only sites on web pages and look for your .com that is listed in Google UK - it ain't there in Yahoo UK. Do the same on AOL UK and choose UK sites - it is not there either - even though they both use the Google DB currently!

In addition - Google.co.uk will list a site with a .co.uk domain regardless of where hosting is based and will also list a .com etc in their UK sites DB if the hosting is identified as being in the UK by IP lookup which Google sometimes gets wrong. So the safest bet? Use a .co.uk.

Nearly every portal and ISP offers a UK filter, 90% do it on TLD. So, in short, if you are selling in the UK it is IMHO insanity not to use a .co.uk domain. Failure to do so can lose you thousands of potential customers looking for UK sites and using a filter where you won't appear if you are a .com

It is only Google who works in the way stated previously. I never fail to be staggered at the number of companies who miss out on highly focussed traffic by not seeing that all other search portals apart from Google do enable some sort of filtering or give a boost purely on domain extension.

On the PPC question, Overture UK, Espotting and Google AdWords are the key players.

Espotting currently appears on Yahoo UK but since Yahoo's purchase of Overture that could change any day!

Edited by MakeMeTop, 30 October 2003 - 03:58 AM.

[mcanerin]

That's a really good point makemetop!

The fact that Google does a thing in a certain way does not always translate into EVERYONE doing it that way. Admittedly, I don't know of one in Canada that filters by .ca, but that could just be do to proximity to the US and the lunatic way they originally set up the .ca registration procedure (enter your longitude and latitude? get real!)

I just tested aol.ca and yahoo.ca with Canadian only and it shows up .coms just fine. That's what I get for making assumptions across borders

The best answer would be to have a .co.uk on a UK IP.

Although my article was about Canadian sites, I think I'll add that caveat in anyway. Thanks!

Ian

[MakeMeTop]

I would imagine that Inktomi will be using the .ca domain to give a boost to sites with its new (and somewhat irregular) geo-targetting algo. But, yes, the point really is that Google is not the only search destination out there.

In the UK, the latest Neilsen figures for August list the following as the top 5 UK search destinations:

Google, MSN (Inktomi), Yahoo (Google), Freeserve (ATW), Ask Jeeves (Teoma UK DB). Of those, 4 have different ways of boosting or filtering UK sites from the method used by Google.

[MakeMeTop]

Yahoo UK has just dropped Espotting - now Overture UK results showing.

I love this market - a change every week

[Eschtruth Harrison]

Thanks MakeMeTop, it's easy to jump to conclusions that what works for one situation (like .ca) is the same for others (.co.uk) and I agree that we all tend to get overly focused on Google.

As to PPC campaigns in the UK we've set up our AdWords to appear in all countries using English language. So one set of Ads shows up both in global searches and UK only searches. The problem is, of course, that the search phrases entered by UK users tend to be different (sometimes much different) than the search phrase used in the US. It's crucial to carefully research search phrases for specific international markets.