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3 Comments

What is the difference between having a single domain vs. a multi-domain strategy?

Hi,

I saw many travel websites have multiple domains when it comes to promoting themselves to local markets, therefore they end up in having a domain per country. On the other side, you have platforms like booking.com that focus on a single domain.

e.g. booking.com vs expedia.com / expedia.co.uk / expedia.fr etc.

Did anyone have any experience with single and multiple domains for their product? What are the upsides and downsides of each approach?

Much appreciated for any enlightenment!

posted to Icon for group Growth
Growth
on May 3, 2020
  1. 2

    That’s a great question I’d be happy to know about it some more too.

    I launched https://theotherworkspace.com and use it as the main and “only” domain, from what I understand it’s good to have one domain because it’s easier to build a good domain ranking / authority on one domain.

    Of course the idea with the other domain endings like .fr .uk etc is to have a country / region / language specific domain. But it’s harder to build links to more domains.

    Apparently you also get some local SEO boost for using a local domain and it also helps to differentiate the languages you have on your website if it is a multi-language one.

    As for myself I also have the https://theotherworkspace.hu domain because I operate in Hungary, but it redirects to the https://theotherworkspace.com/hu/ domain directly. I didn’t want to have to setup and reference two distinct domains so that’s the way I set it up. Now I may have been wrong and may be doing a mistake by setting it up this way so feedback is very welcome.

    Another idea: maybe you can have the different domains if you get big and can afford to manage a ton of domains?

    Happy to hear your thoughts IH community!

    Cheers,

    David

  2. 1

    Using a single domain is better for SEO (unless you're a giant corporation and can dominate every country with different domains).

  3. 1

    TripAdvisor use not only different domains, but subdomains, too.
    I doubt that they have any other purpose except SEO results and multiple listings on the pages, same queries are coming with same results from different subdomains and it's disgusting when you see it, trying to rank some local tour small business and looking 4 tripadvisor results for the same business.

    Add to that Expedia, Travelocity and other big players with millions in the game and that's it, you barely exist where it matters.

    I think google is working in their favor, since millions of dollars are pumped in advertising and they are happily ignoring identical content and reviews served from 50+ different urls.

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