Is .org ranked higher than .com in googles eyes

[glynlafferty]

Hey Warriors,

A guy left a comment on my blog and he reckoned that nowadays a .org domain is looked at as higher than a .com

The guy visits my blog a good bit and says the information is from a trustworthy source.

Anyone else have heard or had experience of this

Glyn

[André Silverspoon]

Well, for me Glyn .com is still common to general masses. If the guy said it comes from a reliable source it might be true in the future. Let us wait and see.

[Josip Barbaric]

There is no real truth in that. I have hundreds of sites(.com, .org, .net and .info) and I have found no reason to believe that this would be true.

Cheers,

Josip

[CliveG]

My experience is that .com is best, but .org is OK too. But I have to admit I have much more experience with .com than .org because "real" users tend to assume that domain names end in .com so .com names are easier to pass on by word of mouth so I tend to use them when available.

[ivatel42]

Hi

My experience too is that .com is better from a cold standing start with no backlinks etc. But then so many other things are to be taken into account so this is only really relevant from the very start as it's how you promote the domain with links and content etc that will be the overriding issue as to how well the domain eventually does.

[bezzer brown]

hi there some people say yes and some peopl say no, i think yes it does i have tryed it out and i can rank better with the .org hope this helped bezzer brown

[Votoshka]

I have read a couple of things recently recommending .org over .com. However, I have no experience with .org (I considered it, but they cost more than .com, so I stuck with the trusted .com!)

I also bought a .info once, and had someone comment on my blog that .info are useless but we'll see! I've read a lot of things that suggest it doesn't really matter at all!

If you want to know, then do an experiment and find out which one works best!

[ivatel42]

Originally Posted by bezzer brown

hi there some people say yes and some peopl say no, i think yes it does i have tryed it out and i can rank better with the .org hope this helped bezzer brown

Hi

Just wondering have you measured this by launching two sites side by side
say
bluewidgets.com and
bluewidgets.org

no links nothing to see the results would be interested if you have as I was thinking of doing that

[GoGetta]

I love .org, I have seen so much success with them, beating even huge authority sites with very little content and backlinks!

But, I still don't think you can compare really, they are both powerful. I would pick both .com and .org!

GoGetta

[bgmacaw]

http://www.warriorforum.com/search.php

YouTube - Weather Prediciton From Groundhog Day

[Vexo]

So far .com .net .org preform the same to me.

[CliveG]

Originally Posted by ivatel42

Hi

Just wondering have you measured this by launching two sites side by side
say
bluewidgets.com and
bluewidgets.org

no links nothing to see the results would be interested if you have as I was thinking of doing that

You would need two fully developed sites with backlinks etc, etc. It would be almost impossible to ensure that they were identical except for the suffix and not, in my opinion, worth the effort.

[ivatel42]

Originally Posted by CliveG

You would need two fully developed sites with backlinks etc, etc. It would be almost impossible to ensure that they were identical except for the suffix and not, in my opinion, worth the effort.

Hi sorry just to clarify, the debate over which is best .com or .org can only really be seen if the two are compared and the only way to do that would be same domain name, same content no links but one is a .com the other .org and then find them in the serps if you can.

Trying to decide which is better .com or .org when one site might be a .org about building chicken coops with 400 articles on and 1000 backlinks but low competition and the other is a .com on beauty tips with 5 articles and 20 backlinks and lots of competition isn't really showing the efficiency of one over the other.

Hopefully that makes sense.

[paulgl]

It's just another myth that won't die, because domain sellers
have conned the masses. SEO is not an extension. Too many
people believe SEO comes before developing a site, rather
than while developing a site. So, they spend their time and
money on stuff that has nothing to do with shinola, then
wonder why they fail.

Paul

[CliveG]

Originally Posted by ivatel42

Hi sorry just to clarify, the debate over which is best .com or .org can only really be seen if the two are compared and the only way to do that would be same domain name, same content no links but one is a .com the other .org and then find them in the serps if you can.

Trying to decide which is better .com or .org when one site might be a .org about building chicken coops with 400 articles on and 1000 backlinks but low competition and the other is a .com on beauty tips with 5 articles and 20 backlinks and lots of competition isn't really showing the efficiency of one over the other.

Hopefully that makes sense.

I understood what you were saying but I was adding that to be a true test the sites must be realistic and that would include, for example, backlinks.

I was also making the point that however careful you were to make the sites the same they might not be. For example, if you uploaded the sites a very small time apart the one that was uploaded first might be scanned by a seach engine spider thus, perhaps, gaining a permanent advantage that has nothing to do with its domain name suffix.

This argument will run and run ...

Clive

[jayuk76]

Originally Posted by glynlafferty

Hey Warriors,

A guy left a comment on my blog and he reckoned that nowadays a .org domain is looked at as higher than a .com

The guy visits my blog a good bit and says the information is from a trustworthy source.

Anyone else have heard or had experience of this

Glyn

Absolute tosh and outdated information he is referring to

Back in the day this had some merit - as Org had some clout but nowadays anyone can buy an .org and put anything on it.

J

[PerfectedWeb]

Just another of the many persistent myths in the SEO field. It might have been valid back in 1997, but today this claim is worth nothing.

[Fallen_Angel]

Ok .org is not ranked higher is ranked same
Google does place a higher TRUST value on links from a .org

[ivatel42]

One thing that does concern me with .org is that they were never intended for commercial purposes were they? Could there be a time that they get penalized for that very fact I wonder.

[Social-Media-Marketing]

Originally Posted by glynlafferty

Hey Warriors,

A guy left a comment on my blog and he reckoned that nowadays a .org domain is looked at as higher than a .com

The guy visits my blog a good bit and says the information is from a trustworthy source.

Anyone else have heard or had experience of this

Glyn

Google does not give any ranking boost to any particular top level domains. They are TLD agnostic.

The TLD for your domain name ONLY matters in regards to Google determining which view of Google's index your site is targeting. All non-country coded TLDs (non-ccTLDs like .com, .org, .net, .info, etc.) are assumed to be targeting Google.com and US/Global visitors. All ccTLDs (like .co.uk, .co.in, .ca, etc) are assumed to be targeting that country's view of the Google index (like Google.co.uk, Google.co.in, Google.ca).

Other than determining Geographic targeting preferences (if not set in Google's Webmaster Tools) your TLD does NOT affect rankings.

[James Fried]

I want to believe that the tld does not have any impact but my experience has been a little bit different.

For, me .org, .net and .com have been the clear winners but I can't say which one is #1.

[sprakash]

According to my opinion TLD does not matter in SEO, it's depend on your work and you can get #1 with any website .com .net .org .info

[Hardi Wijaya]

Stephan Spencer: OK. So, I guess, a follow on to that would be: a .edu and .gov link, and so forth, has, typically, a more pristine link neighborhood, so it is not just about the PageRank, right? The link neighborhood comes into play. Matt Cutts: That is a little bit of a secret sauce question, so I am not going to go into how much we do trust that sort of stuff.

[janeiro82]

Here is my soultion:

Type in google: "google." the first result is Google
Google.org is only at fifth place

[CliveG]

Originally Posted by Social-Media-Marketing

Google does not give any ranking boost to any particular top level domains. They are TLD agnostic.

The TLD for your domain name ONLY matters in regards to Google determining which view of Google's index your site is targeting. All non-country coded TLDs (non-ccTLDs like .com, .org, .net, .info, etc.) are assumed to be targeting Google.com and US/Global visitors. All ccTLDs (like .co.uk, .co.in, .ca, etc) are assumed to be targeting that country's view of the Google index (like Google.co.uk, Google.co.in, Google.ca).

Other than determining Geographic targeting preferences (if not set in Google's Webmaster Tools) your TLD does NOT affect rankings.

Do you have a source or evidence for this assertion because it is not consistent with my experience?

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by Fallen_Angel

Ok .org is not ranked higher is ranked same
Google does place a higher TRUST value on links from a .org

If this were true, then everyone would be getting dot orgs.
So, why aren't we? Anybody can get a dot org.

I can show you a zillion dot orgs that are scam/scum. Has nothing
at all to do with trust. The only one I can think of that was seen
as scammy was dot biz. But that was only perception. I can't
get over how so many people do SEO on feelings instead of facts
and logic.

Who comes up with this stuff?

Paul

[Domainate]

.org does have an inherent trust factor with it, and it can help in rankings IF Google sees you have quality content fitting what you're trying to rank for. I threw Miscarriages.org up a few months ago with articles targeting miscarriage related keywords, and Miscarriages.org itself targeted to miscarriages. It's Page 4 for miscarriages (xx,xxx/mo search term) and articles are page 1 or rapidly climbing for terms they're targetting which are all xxx-x,xxx/mo terms. No link building, nothing done to the site besides putting up the original content, nothing.

I think in most cases. Google is going to rank a .com above a .org, but considering an exact match term in .com is likely going to run you 20 times the price of the .org if not much more, .org gets you more bang for your buck. That said, NOT ALL niches fit .org, but I sell plenty of .org domains on a regular basis to smart buyers who know that they can own #1 for the term pretty handily if they play their cards right.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by Nametrader.com

.org does have an inherent trust factor with it, and it can help in rankings IF Google sees you have quality content fitting what you're trying to rank for. I threw Miscarriages.org up a few months ago with articles targeting miscarriage related keywords, and Miscarriages.org itself targeted to miscarriages. It's Page 4 for miscarriages (xx,xxx/mo search term) and articles are page 1 or rapidly climbing for terms they're targetting which are all xxx-x,xxx/mo terms. No link building, nothing done to the site besides putting up the original content, nothing.

I think in most cases. Google is going to rank a .com above a .org, but considering an exact match term in .com is likely going to run you 20 times the price of the .org if not much more, .org gets you more bang for your buck. That said, NOT ALL niches fit .org, but I sell plenty of .org domains on a regular basis to smart buyers who know that they can own #1 for the term pretty handily if they play their cards right.

Complete baloney. But keep selling those domains and this forum will keep
filling up with google haters who got slapped.

Parlor tricks are not SEO, but they sure sell domains from brokers.

If you think a dot org has some inherent trust factor, man, how can
one argue with someone who thinks like that?

Just what exactly does your miscarriages.org rank for?
Half the pages on it are not even indexed by google.

Paul

[Domainate]

Originally Posted by paulgl

Complete baloney. But keep selling those domains and this forum will keep
filling up with google haters who got slapped.

Parlor tricks are not SEO, but they sure sell domains from brokers.

If you think a dot org has some inherent trust factor, man, how can
one argue with someone who thinks like that?

Just what exactly does your miscarriages.org rank for?
Half the pages on it are not even indexed by google.

Paul

The trust factor has more to do with people than search engines. For instance, the vast majority taking everything that's on Wikipedia as fact when a lot of BS shows up on there, and all the political groups that use .org's for propaganda essentially...they could get a perfectly good .com but they go with .org.

Having said that, Google tries as best they can to feed the people what they want, and if they see people trusting .org's...

Whatever though...you don't have to believe it and you can keep sticking with .com only and in most cases .com IS the best you can go with, but in some cases to get the ideal .com to target a particular keyword phrase, you'd have to spend tens of thousands of dollars, which most people here don't have. Exact match in a .net or .org will trump a non-exact match .com any day of the week, not taking into account links and other SEO of course.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Nametrader.com

My Domains For Sale: .com | .net | .org | Other Extensions
Domainate.com - Domain Services & Newsletter - >>>WE WANT YOUR DOMAINS!<<<

Yes, I find what you're saying absolutely believable.

YouTube - used cars - high prices

I have heard you with unmistakable clarity.

[rayan]

I don't think this is true as well.. Google should not place any additional weight on domain extension..

[Domainate]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

Yes, I find what you're saying absolutely believable.

YouTube - used cars - high prices

I have heard you with unmistakable clarity.

Don't listen to me then, listen to SEOMoz...a recent blog post of theirs even so you know it's current information.

(referring to their extensive research) "The .org TLD extension is surprising - do these sites earn more links? Do they have less spam? Perhaps they tend to be less commercial and have an easier time garnering references? In any case, we're happy to be SEOmoz.org!"

I'm not pulling this stuff out off my ass to sell domains. I sell domains and have been successful at it for years because this information exists and has been said by many sources who had actually done extensive research on it. Keep dismissing it and I'll happily sell domains to your competitors instead while you keep regging crap non-exact-matching .com domains. Just because you're slow at getting it doesn't mean it isn't true.

[Mike Grant]

Originally Posted by Nametrader.com

Don't listen to me then, listen to SEOMoz...a recent blog post of theirs even so you know it's current information.

(referring to their extensive research) "The .org TLD extension is surprising - do these sites earn more links? Do they have less spam? Perhaps they tend to be less commercial and have an easier time garnering references? In any case, we're happy to be SEOmoz.org!"

I'm not pulling this stuff out off my ass to sell domains. I sell domains and have been successful at it for years because this information exists and has been said by many sources who had actually done extensive research on it. Keep dismissing it and I'll happily sell domains to your competitors instead while you keep regging crap non-exact-matching .com domains. Just because you're slow at getting it doesn't mean it isn't true.

Yep, I posted that in the other thread a few days ago and it was conveniently overlooked. Right on.

[timpears]

I don't think that Google gives a damn what the extension is on your domain name. They care about the information on your pages and the links that point to your site.

[Talar]

So many opinions, so little testing. Someone mentioned chicken coops. Top 10 for "chicken coops" (no quotes), chicken coop plans, etc ... all dot coms, although several are Squidoo lens or Hubpages.

Search for "information on chicken coops" and number three or four is a .info ... a supposedly worthless TLD.

You don't think that perhaps becuase I asked for "information' Google actually read what I typed and tried to match it to a result with the same words do you? Naw, much more fun to postulate what Google does rather than observe the reality of what it does.

[timpears]

@Talar

How do you do a valid test? There are so many variables that go into it, and none of us know what they are. Much of it depends on the content, so unless you buy all the vaious TLDs and then put identical content on each one, and if you intend on back linking, you would have to do exactly the same link for each site, and who knows if the same ones would stick. Then maybe you might have a valid test.

A Warrior had a thread in the last few days that said he was going to do a test on some domains he bought, but I don't remember who it was. I just think there are way too many variables to be able to do a valid test.

[HCLee]

I have no real preference although I stick with only .com, .org, .net in this order as suggested by Xfactor. I'll buy whichever is available.

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by Nametrader.com

Don't listen to me then, ....

We won't. We'll listen to people like bgmacaw.

Paul

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Nametrader.com

Don't listen to me then, listen to SEOMoz...a recent blog post of theirs even so you know it's current information.

(referring to their extensive research) "The .org TLD extension is surprising - do these sites earn more links? Do they have less spam? Perhaps they tend to be less commercial and have an easier time garnering references? In any case, we're happy to be SEOmoz.org!"

I'm not pulling this stuff out off my ass to sell domains. I sell domains and have been successful at it for years because this information exists and has been said by many sources who had actually done extensive research on it. Keep dismissing it and I'll happily sell domains to your competitors instead while you keep regging crap non-exact-matching .com domains. Just because you're slow at getting it doesn't mean it isn't true.

Hi Nametrader,

This could be a case of confusing cause with effect. Rand specifically says in his conclusions:

"This data gives us more reason to believe Google's webspam chief, Matt Cutts, when he says .gov, .info and .edu are not special cased and don't receive special bonuses or penalties to rankings"

If a football team wins more games than average, are we to conclude that the referees have a preference for this team, or is it more reasonable to conclude the team has better players?

Just because strong players on the World Wide Web prefer certain TLDs doesn't mean that the TLD will magically help you rank better in the search engines. This type of magical thinking is what led to Cargo Cults (and a few WSOs on this forum).

There are very good reasons why a .com is valued much higher than other TLDs and it primarily centers around it being the default first choice for users that are searching with "commercial intent". It also happens to be the default TLD that browsers automatically append to names in the address bar. Yes .com domains resell for much higher prices, because they worth much more.

I do agree with you that exact match keyword domains are easier to rank in search engines, particularly on Google. Some TLDs may be worth more than others due to public perception and default assumptions, but I haven't seen any bias on Google rankings except for .cc (country codes).

[Phasm]

Guys, I don't know what makes you think one tld is better than another but it's NOT TRUE.

Matt Cutts has stated multiple times on his blog that domain extension (tld) has 0 pull with Google. The reason people for a long time believed that .edu websites had some sort of 'special' consideration is because .edu websites generally have (naturally) lots of backlinks and people referring to them.

The only special consideration you should put into deciding on a tld is user consideration. If your website is more credible looking as a .org then use a .org, if you're running a company use a .com, if you're making a throw away mini site use whatever the hell is cheapest.

[misterkailo]

Originally Posted by Phasm

Guys, I don't know what makes you think one tld is better than another but it's NOT TRUE.

Matt Cutts has stated multiple times on his blog that domain extension (tld) has 0 pull with Google. The reason people for a long time believed that .edu websites had some sort of 'special' consideration is because .edu websites generally have (naturally) lots of backlinks and people referring to them.

The only special consideration you should put into deciding on a tld is user consideration. If your website is more credible looking as a .org then use a .org, if you're running a company use a .com, if you're making a throw away mini site use whatever the hell is cheapest.

Can you explain to me why .info sites are so hard to rank? I have tested over 20 .info EMD and they would never start off on page 1-3, but when I do it for .com, .org, .net, they would rank page 1-2 right off the bat.

[Phasm]

Originally Posted by misterkailo

Can you explain to me why .info sites are so hard to rank? I have tested over 20 .info EMD and they would never start off on page 1-3, but when I do it for .com, .org, .net, they would rank page 1-2 right off the bat.

.info domains are a special case scenario. There is no 'hard' evidence to prove it, but they are generally associated with spam/throw away sites because they were 99cents for a long while.

Last year, google purged ALL .info domains from the SERPs for a period of time. A lot of people argued if it was intentional or an accident. You have to look at it this way: if you were google and 99% of the websites with a certain tld (.info) were complete spam, garbage, throw away sites how would you take care of it? There appears to be a special consideration for .info domains to offset the spam sites and keep googles #1 priority (relevancy) in check. With that said, it IS possible to rank .info sites at the #1 position, but if you really believe in the .info penalty spend the extra few dollars and get a .net/.org/.com/etc.