Registering Multiple domain names
Google is the most widely used search engine, representing the bulk of referrals to a website. Search engines have long had the problem of balancing the needs of the searchers with the needs of the advertisers. Users want to find relevant results, not be bombarded with advertising from the companies that can afford to pay the most for their attention. In the beginning Google offered users the choice of searching the web or searching within your country but because of the expansion of Google advertising, Google has now changed the way results are generated.
The following is a list of Google websites from around the world
http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/time-zone/usa/websites/google.com/google-usa.htm
Automatic redirection
When typing in www.google.com, you the user will automatically be redirected to the google website specific to your country. So if you live in Australia, google will use your ip address to redirect you to www.google.com.au . At first there doesn't seem to an issue, after all, the option seems to be there to search the entire web or just australian results.
Search:
Google is using the IP address of the searcher to return results and it not easy to avoid being redirected from the google.com website.This will mean that searchers in the UK will be more likely to be directed to UK websites, US searchers will be more likely to be directed to US sites, regardless of whether the searcher chooses the "Search the web" option or not. Google seems to be intent on moving to localized search.
Conclusion
This means that companies that offer services in different countries need to (1) register the domain name extension related to that country and (2) develop websites targetting that country.
If you are thinking about expanding to a particular region, it would be a wise investment to register the domain of your company specific to that country. Google and other search engines because of the localized nature of most advertising will continue to develop their algorithm to preference local results and companies that may have done well on a non localized search, will find that their website will be passed over by local websites.
Not all search results seem to have this phenomena of preferencing local results, and it appears that Google may be using its Google adwords database to determine which results will be affected and which will not. In any respect, if a country domain name is registered, domain name forwarding can always be used to redirect traffic to the main website and many of the big corporations like Microsoft, IBM and Oracle, redirect their country specific domains back to their .com domain name. Alternatively, all domain names are with Passion Computing, you have the ability to use add on domains, so you can set up mail and web aliases for your additional domains using the one hosting account.
See Web Hosting for more information. Email hosting plans also offer unlimiated domain aliases.