All the major search engines offer a .com engine and country-targeted or local search engine like Google.ca, Yahoo.de, MSN.fr and so on. Using IP detection to determine a searcher’s geographic location, the search engine often defaults the user to the local engine. Sure, a searcher can force the search engine to show the .com version, but most searchers are not that advanced or prefer the relevance that the local search engine index provides.

If a search engine returned a bunch of results for your search query that were all pretty much the same, you would get a bit irritated, wouldn’t you? Search engines understand this, and have tweaked their algorithms to filter very similar pages so you get a range of results that are relevant, but still different enough. According to Google, duplicate content generally refers to blocks of content on one website or across multiple domains that are either identical or almost identical.

What do you see when you search for your company or brand name? Is there anything on the first page of the search engine results that you wouldn’t be proud to display on your home page? Consumer review sites, blogs and forums have made it easy for anyone to say whatever they want about your company, whether they be disgruntled customers or competitors who like to play dirty. If you’re in a situation where negative publicity is front and center in search results, there are ways you can reclaim search engine real estate for your corporate identity.