At times,  I really do think that computers were invented to give me ulcers, and make stocks rise for Rolaids or other Antacids. Anyhow, there was a question posed, which is below.

I have a question. Assume I want to develop a domain and I grab the .com, ,net, .org, and .info. I develop the domain. So it’s one domain and one extension that I use. Say it’s xyz.info. I do all my marketing, develop lots of content pages, no dups, a variety of anchor links from relevant sites, all the good stuff.

Now assume I didn’t develop it under .info, but used .net and did the SAME exact thing.

Now assume I didn’t develop the other two under either .info or .net, but used .com.

With all things being equal in my trades and content etc, which would perform better w/ the search engines.

I guess what I am asking is, does .com, .net, or .info matter with the search engines on this hypothetical site? Keep in mind I am only developing the site once and no matter what extension I use I will do the same way?

And I thought I went about things in a circle

In theory it makes no difference which you use, no TLD will trump another in rankings. Meaning that a well optimized page using a ‘dot info‘ isn’t going to be ranked any lower than if it was a ‘dot com‘ domain.   In Theory.

There is some proof to that, in regards to how many ‘dot net & dot org’s‘ are high in rankings for selected keywords. As to the ‘dot info‘ domains, well the answer is, How Many Do You See in the Top Rankings?  Now this could simply be, because not many are using the ‘dot info‘ domain for anything that is searched often enough. Or we simply don’t know the ‘keywords‘ they might be targeting. Still, I rather buy into the theory that the top 3 levels… ‘dot Com, Net, Org‘ will take precedence over any of the other recent levels, like ‘dot biz & info‘. Simply because they have been around longer, and there are more of them.
Assuming you own all of the domain, the ‘dot com, net, org, info‘ and only develop the one, the theory says it will make no difference. Still I am not convinced, given how many others there are. I know a ‘dot ca‘ isn’t going to rank high in the global index, but will within the Canadian version. Same with other country TLD’s.  Then there is the ‘dot tv, biz‘ and others, that just never seem to appear high up in the rankings. That would give credence to that assumption that at some point, the TLD designation is degraded or given a lower value.

Is it? Hell, only the SE companies know, and frankly they ain’t talking. However, if it was me, who owned all of them, I’d develop the ‘dot com‘ over the others. Simply because it has ‘recognition‘ in the minds of surfers and consumers.

Obviously, from a marketing point, a ‘dot com‘ still rates with the customer/consumer, so would remain ideal to own. If you have a ‘other‘ domain extension, the key is still going to be the ‘incoming links‘ and whether or not, the site is properly optimized, and updated.

Posted on September 30th, 2007 by Gaystoryman
Filed under: SEO Mysteries & Myths