Would a sites ranking be affected by its domain extension? Do particular search engines have different preferences? And also,would visitors tend to visit the .com results from a search engine query,over say .info thanks
On an adult webmaster board, they were talking about this matter. As .info is really cheap, adult webmaters are tempted to buy dozen of them just launch as many sites as they can. In the end, they concluded that the domain does not interfere with the results. It all depends on how you work on the site. However, as people are not stupid and .info are used in large scale for spam and scam, people might ignore or choose .com or .net over .info when they see the search results.
Domain extensions do "not" play a role in search results; now, people tend to point out that majority of the top results are *.com, *.net & *.org but fail to realize one thing, these extensions have been around almost 10x longer than newer extensions such as *.info, *.pro, *.biz, etc. As with anything that's new in a market that's already saturated it will take a very long time for the "new product" to become widely used. However, domain extension still seems to play a big role in branding and consume recognition. So, the best way to look at this is that domain extensions have ZERO play in SEO, but in terms of customer recognition it can have an impact.
I have seen somewhat of better rankings on .com's & .net's for similar sites... I would say its a blend of good seo and a decent direct match domain name.
If the only available options to register a key word phrase as a domain were 1.A hyphenated .com or .net or 2.An unhyphenated .info Which would be more effective?
I would say a .com. I have had a time getting .info's ranked as quickly as .com's. Either way you look at it .com's are good (that's just the way people are branded to think .com), and my personal experience with .com ranking quickly is much better.
Someone did a study, using the same content on 3 domains. keyword1.com keyword1.net keyword1.org built the same links for all 3, same hosting, same geo location, etc -- everything the same. The .org ranked first. With that said, people claim search engines do not have a preference. All tld's do rank, for one keyword or another --the only thing i suggest is to stay away from .info. People claim it does not matter, all i can say,from personal experience -- it does. I personally like .com or .org, if i really like the domain name, i might get the .net if neither others are available -- or add hyphens and get the .com or .org. Stay away from .info
Hi WunschShrek, That's interesting I did a similar test but got different results... I guess its all hearsay or personal preference. I always grab the .com first then the .net if its a domain name that I really want. I stay away from .org's they sound too non-profit for me. Cheers!
I have never read anything about special preferences when it comes to domain extensions by search engines specially .com, although with some SEO books I've read, .gov and .edu are respected by search engines, still no proof that special treatment is given. Regarding search results from query, I scan the results page and choose what I think is the most relevant answer to my search disregarding if the website is .com or .info.
Yes the .com or .org to me is a personal preference. When you did your test, what were your results? If you feel like sharing I am interested. Do you agree staying away from .info? To me, it seems there is some kind of extra filter (or sandbox, however you want to say it) applied to .info that makes them take longer to prove themselves.
Nope, Google doesn't favor any domain extensions. They are treated equally. It doesn't matter what domains you choose. Ranking depends on quality linkbuilding.
Take a .info and .com and run a test. I bet it takes the .info MUCH longer to get out of the 'sandbox'. Have you ever done this? If not, where did you get the information to base your answers on?
Yes, search engines know how to deal with hyphens. Take the image name for example.. I read many times that google prefer on this order: 1 - myimagename.jpg 2 - my-image-name.jpg 3 - my_image_name.jpg 4 - my image name.jpg Of course, underscore and blank spaces can't be used on domain names. offtopic: when naming an image file, a good thing to do is use also tags.
.com is preferred as is it so common that even if somebody just know about the main (TLD) domain name, they will automatically assume .com as the extension in case they forget to remember the actual one. Besides that there should be no significant difference from SEs point of view.