:We're looking to set up an Italian version of an existing site .com site for a client, using '.it' domain name.

For simplicity we're looking into parking the '.it' domain name in the same UK based hosting space as the existing .com version of the site.

Looking at google.it there is a 'pages in italian' (pagine in Italiano) search option and a 'pages in italy' (pagine provenienti da: Italia) option.

Currently the Italian translations of the pages already appear to a degree in 'pages in italian' searches, but we're interested to hear if anyone knows how much/little success where likely to have featuring in 'pages in italy' searches if we have our new '.it' domain name parked alongside the .com version in the UK based hosting space.

Any help appreciated.


Regards,


Antony
www.alphastate.co.uk
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Hi Antony - welcome to the forums.

The trick here is to make it as easy as possible for the search engine to identify the geographic and language location of the site.

You've obviously done the right thing with the language because, as you say, Google.it is already identifying the pages as in the Italian language.

Now you need the search engines to understand that the site is, in fact in Italy.

Using the .it will help with this - but additionally you need local in-country in-language links to 'attach' the site to the country.

There is a lot of debate over hosting - but you should really only worry about the hosting if there is some reason why you have to stick to a .com with no chance of generating local links....

Andy

Thanks Andy.

Antony