.com's or .net's

what about country tlds.. will it get preference for keywords which have the country name ??

 

Not really, .co.uk for instance though does tell users that the site is based in the UK, or at least suggests that it is... however if it's hosted in the UK it will come up higher when you click "pages from the UK".

The domain extension is really only for the benefit of the user it seems, and it is thought to be pretty much irrelevant to search engines - as has been repeated ad naseum in this thread already.

P.S. The extensions shouldn't be dismissed as unimportant though, just because Google et al ignore it.

 

this makes no sense at all. how and when did domain extension name affects the ranking of a certain site? wow...

 

I don't know what you are talking about, no one said that it did?

 

I believe that in the case of traditional TLDs (.com - .net - .org) which one is used by a web site doesn't affect its rankings on the search results.

However, I believe that in the case of the rest of the TLDs and more specifically in the case of country TLDs, its rankings can be affected according to which is the "official" language of the country from where the search is made. In other words... a web site using a domain .es will have a better ranking than a site using a domain .tw, if you make the search from a country where the official language is Spanish.

Need confirmation?

In the next example, a search is made using the highly competitive keyword "prada", one of the most famous brands of clothes, purses, shoes, etc.

When I make the search on 3 different versions of Google, each one being used in a country with a different official language, France, Germany & Taiwan, the search results in every case include web sites using domain TLDs associated with the specific language of every country.

Click on the following links to see the results:

Google France

http://www.google.fr/search?hl=fr&q=prada&btnG=Recherche+Google&meta=

Google Germany

http://www.google.de/search?hl=de&q=prada&btnG=Google-Suche&meta=

Google Taiwan

http://www.google.com.tw/search?complete=1&hl=zh-TW&q=prada&btnG=Google+搜尋&meta=


It looks very clear to me!



.

 

All 3 of those bring up .com first?

 

It doesn't seem that having a .net opposed to a .com really matters a lot. Most people do searches for what they are looking for. And if they did choose to type in your website address it would be because they have been there before and more then likely your .net website address will automatically show up in there browser once they start keying in the address or if they are frequent visitors they would have it in there favorites.

 

It doesn't make a different, it's just because there are more .coms than .nets and if someone was going to spend lots of money to get a good rank they would probably buy the .com

 

Agreed it doesn't make a difference. A lot of the .coms are older and have more authority and quality backlinks.

The only advantage with a .com is the higher resale value if it's a good domain name.

 

Yes, first positions for the 3 searches are all .com but in the following positions there are country TLDs that are associated with the language of the country from where supposedly the search was made.

There are 3 .fr in the top ten of the search results of Google France, there are 7 .de in the top ten of the search results of Google Deutschland and there is one .tw and one .cn in the search results of Google Taiwan.

All I'm saying is that having a country TLD helps you get in the top ten results for searches made from countries where the language spoken is the same corresponding language of your country TLD.

.

 

They rank the same, you see .com because its much more common that .net.

 

It isn't true though, I've experimented with this. The reason the .fr ones appear near the top of the French Google is because they have ip addresses inside France, the .fr might help solidify their spot but I doubt it - if they were hosted in the United States I don't think they would do so well in the search results for French sites, not based on the URL anyway. The French content might do it though.

 

people like .com google also..

 

I was contacted by an auction website like 7-8 months ago being notified that the e-articles.net is available. But why paying like $15,000+ to buy an expired (and maybe bad history!) domain name at an auction website while my actual .info is playing extremely well? I replyed them telling to find other dummies for their "friendly" offer. It is not worth at all. Having a .com or .net is just an old fashioned trend More than that, a .info plays very well for a site containing information.

I agree, a "beautiful" .com or .net or .org is ok to get if you find it free at the moment of registration but no way to buy it for .extension while other tlds are still unregistered for the same "beautiful" domain name. Anyway, it's very important to follow the main purpose of your website too.

 

The URL for this seems to have changed but this was from a previous FAQ on the Google site:

http://www.google.com/intl/en/webmasters/faq.html#country

 

They're talking about duplicate content here, but it's interesting what they say about TLDs.

From Google Help Center:

http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=66359&query=specific+country&topic=&type=

.

 

That's true. On the other hand, my own experience combined with previous research, coupled with other Google statements, says that the domain extension is not the only factor.

At one time a couple of years ago, I was promoting two Canadian sites, one hosted in the US with a .ca domain and the other hosted in Canada with a .com domain. Both ranked well (top 5) in google.ca and I really couldn't see any difference in difficulty in getting them ranked.

Other research (not personal experience) suggested that on page content such as addresses was also considered in regional rankings. For example. whatever the domain extension, if the site content prominently features a Canadian address, this seems to help with ranking in google.ca.

FWIW.

 

Does that work the same with the .WS domains I have about 6 real good ones not sure what to do with them.

 

The search engines don't care what the tld is.

It's all about incoming links. You'll be just fine getting a .net.

 

that's right...the .com ,.net ......really nothing ..except .gov,.edu