does anyone have any experience with .ws domains? am thinking of purchasing a domain for my niche with the .ws extension but not sure about how much weight google puts on .ws websites vs .com.
apparently not. it's western samoa's ccTLD but they tried to market it as a generic that stood for "web site."
domain name extensions won't affect se ranking at all but affect with people recognize. Most of people prefer to .com instead of other domain extensions in their minds so .com extension has some advantage when you need people to remember your site.
Yep, .ws is Western Samoa, though people use it to mean Website. Google still treats it as a local TLD though so you'll have to be careful unless you're targetting the Western Samoan market
are there any direct statements from google that a ccTLD will be less likely to rank in the "regular" serps? I know they're more likely to rank in the country-specific serps, but that's kind of a seperate issue. I wouldn't have thought it mattered. haven't given it much thought as I don't use ws domains or anything similar, but kinda curious. .us sites certainly seem to do just fine.
A local TLD isn't less likely to rank in the .com SERPS, it's just less likely to rank in 'other' local SERPS if you're targeting that market. Using a .ws to target UK customers in the .co.uk SERPS for example 'may' put you at a disadvantage. Of course there are other factors such as the IP location of the host and the IP address of sites linking to the domain, but it's very difficult to assess exactly how each affects the local SERPS quantitively.
They do. Extensions like edu, gov, mil etc. are the only ones google treats differently. They have authority to begin with, so to speak, because of the fact that not everyone can reg them. But you can achieve just as good rankings with a .ws as a .com
It's not the TLD that gives the extra boost, it's the extra trustrank that they pass from being trusted sites themselves. A .com with the same links to it would pass a similar amount of benefit.
Spamming is prohibited in this forum., Noone will be interested to do business with a spammer, that too in a highly sensitive field.,
It is more like common knowledge - meaning I don't have written proof. You could probably find proof if you google it It would not matter. A .com would obviously be preferred, but that is merely value-wise, since homes.com is worth more than homes.ws. SEO wise there would be no difference
Hmmm didn't realise it was for western samoa. Think will stick away from it. Google does uses localised domains for emphasis, ie if i search for certain keywords on google.co.nz (local google) it will put more emphasis on .co.nz results than if i do the same search on google.com.
So I own a .be domain which is about to expire... would you suggest I get a .com this time.. as I registered the .be when there was a promotion and it was free.