What is the better for a multinational site URL structure?

[Guest]

Any international SEOs in the house? Your thoughts on which is better for a multinational site URL structure (say for a French language site):

• 1) company. com/fr

OR

• 2) company . fr

I am leaning toward #2 because it may have better localization.

[Vic]

Internationally you should be fine either for search as long as you are consistent.

I like folders bc they are easier to manage in the cms and people i work with have a hard time rmemebrring all the different tlds.

I think users woyld prefer the .fr or whatever they see as local.

[Michaël]

It depends on your budget, but #2 is preferred especially if you have local offices. #1 is easier as you just have one website to worry about although managing a multilingual issue is not always easy.

[Rob]

Second one every day. You put the user first and they will always trust an .fr over a .com/fr