6 replies to this topic

[turbocashuk]

Hello to all. This is a great site - well done Jill.

I am unsure what to do about the fact that yahoo.co.uk and msn.co.uk (all many others for that matter) dont show .com addresses in their searches, even if the website is a UK website registered in the UK.

My site is for free open source accounting software in the UK, but because it is a .com it does not appear in yahoo.co.uk (but it does under google.co.uk - in fact the optimisation is working very well there already). Is the only way around this for me to register a .co.uk and point it to the .com address? Will this cause problems with the search engines?

Also, I was lucky enough to be picked up by the google spiders quickly, and am already on aol.com, yahoo.com and excite.com, but not msn.com. Will msn eventually pick me up? Is there any point paying $300 to submit to the yahoo directory if I'm already picked up at yahoo.com? Who actually searches the directories? I for one never do, I just use the main searches.

Thanking you in advance.

Jonathan

[Jill]

Welcome, turbocashuk!

I don't know enough about the UK engines to help you, but I'm sure some of our UK moderator's or members will know what your best solution would be.

Off the top of my head I'd say that you could register the .co.uk version and permanently redirect the .com version to that.

Jill

[qwerty]

That's the advice I've seen in the past from UK-based SEOs. Having a .co.uk domain shouldn't hurt you on the .com versions of the SEs, but they seem to be pretty picky about making sure you have one when they're searching UK sites.

And not that it matters, but that seems odd to me. They could definitely check your IP address and see that you're hosted in the UK, but apparently they don't bother.

[MakeMeTop]

The above answers are correct. Many UK versions of SEs (with the exception of Google) filter by domain not location. A .com site is viewed as an international site, not a UK site - so searches on international searches but doesn't on UK searches. Google filters by IP, or domain - but can still leave out some UK .com sites if hosting is on an IP address they don't recognise.

Using the .co.uk is always the safest bet.

[awall19]

With a large amount of the web being english based, why do you suppose the UK search engines do this?

How does it benifit their users?

At the very least I think this should be a feature which can be turned on, not one that automatically filters and defines everything the search engine shows.

Many people who want news from outside the UK probably can not even find it. Luckily UK news is the most unbiased US news available.

[qwerty]

At least on the Google UK SE, it is an option. There's a pair of radio buttons allowing the searcher to choose between global and UK-based results.

[turbocashuk]

Thanks for the speedy replies everyone. I will set up a .co.uk and use a 301 permanent redirect.

Is there any point [url=http://www.highrankings.com/forum/index.php?showforum=21]Submitting to Directories[/url] if I've already been picked up on most search engines with the exception of msn, lycos and ask? Who actually searches directories? My results on google are fantastic and it seems they've got most of the market, so maybe I shouldn't bother spending hundreds of $ submitting to Looksmart and the like.

In fact, Looksmart have got a cheek charging on a cpc basis. It can become hellishly expensive.