I’ve just noticed a change in google webmasters to do with the geo settings.
You’ll maybe know that with non-country specific, top-level domain extenstions like .com .net and .org you can specify within the tools the country that you’d like to associate the domain with.
For instance as my business site is on a .com domain I have indicated that my content is primarily for the UK. If your domain ends with .uk then you can’t say that you’re actually wanting to target USA or Australia, etc.
It used to display the date when you last set the geographical target but that now appears to have gone. That’s a slight shame because it was handy to know when you set it if you’re checking out ranking issues.
I’d suggest that using a .uk domain (whenever available) for a UK centric site is a sensible approach. If you want the equivalent .com then register that too and forward to your .uk
I’ve not come across a definitive answer to how long it takes google to recognise and act upon your preferred geo setting – if there is one somewhere, let me know.