There are several theories of thought when it comes to .us domain extensions. They are inferior to com/net/org for resale value but not SEO. They are inferior to com/net/org for resale value and SEO. They are an ideal pick when com/net/org are taken. They may be equal to com/net/org for SEO but nobody will click on that site, as it lacks familiarity. While this thread primarily discusses the aspects of SEO and not resale, I am willing to entertain any tangent of discussion in this area. Here's the situation: I purchased 8 .us domains and 1 .com. I optimized and backlinked each equally using niche-related keyworded article directory submissions. The .com was indexed for its KW and sits at the bottom of page 1 after only a mere 2 weeks. Six .us domains are indexed in Google but not for any keywords, and two .us domains aren't in Google at all. Is this mere luck -- as the .com was in fact registered several days before the others, yet they all have been registered for over two weeks now and the .com is the only one getting indexed. They all are equal in terms of competition and exact keyword searches per month. What are your thoughts?
I've generally seen no difference when optimizing .us and .com domains - they've both managed to perform well with the right link building. Anecdotally though, I think there might be a lower click through rate - I've never had the opportunity to measure it scientifically, but it does seem that .us sites perform less well in the SERPs. And I think just from an emotive POV they'd have less value in resale - there's something more powerful about a .com. Interesting that you've seen differences in SERP position though - that's something I wouldn't expect and haven't seen before. I'm putting it down to "chance" or differences in inbound links.
I believe SEOmoz had an article recently where they discussed out all other TLD's are technically inferior to .coms. It showed .net and .org to be roughly half of the "SEO value" as compared to the venerable .com. I believe .us would be in a similar predicament. I would only for .us for certain branding capabilities.
Just to confuse things further, there are some interesting stats on this post: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1835155
Equal gTLDs rank the same way. I suggest reading about "exact match domains vs keyword rich domains" so I don't need to explain why would I always choose an exact match high search volume .net/.org rather than keyword rich .com (let's say some prefix included like "my" or something else..). People need to make a difference between exact matches and keyword rich domains. It's not the same thing, you have to realize that.