I have a website that contains world-wide suitable content, although it is in English. The site is just information; not ecommerce. However, it has a ccTLD of .co.uk, so will search engines specifically drive UK users towards my site and divert the rest of the world away from my site?Or, will the site simply rank marginally higher for UK users and be mixed in with the 'bigger pot' for the rest of the world?Does having a .com site make it more 'world-wide' or do the search engines check to see where a site is actually hosted (by IP)?
Will search engines divert worldwide traffic away from a website with a country specific TLD?
seo;top level domains;country specific
[Information below refers to Google, since you brought it up in your comment on other answer. Different engines may behave differently, though probably not by too much.]Or, will the site simply rank marginally higher for UK users and be mixed in with the 'bigger pot' for the rest of the world?This is more accurate than how you described things in your first paragraph, though the effect is relatively small versus other, more basic factors like the actual content of your pages. You should read the Webmaster Tools info on geotargeting.Does having a .com site make it more 'world-wide' or do the search engines check to see where a site is actually hosted (by IP)?.com domains are treated as generic by Google, with no particular geographic weighting. However, if you set up a Webmaster Tools account, these domains will have an option allowing you to tell Google if you're targeting a particular geographic area. Sometimes the IP is taken into consideration also.