.INFO .NET & .COM

[George Pitts]

Hey Warriors,

I have read quite a bit of mixed reviews on these three domains. So I want to get the record straight not just for myself but others who may be struggling with that same issue

1. Is there a true difference in how your site will rank having one over the other of these domains.

2. Is it better to have a .info only for auto blogs or .Com for better SEO

3. If .Com is better when is the best time to use another domain other than .com

Thanks

George

[SeoWizzard]

it is pretty well known that .com 's are ranking better than the rest. Then most people see the next best choice as .net As for .info their original purpose is for information websites, but many people use .info for other things too. If you work a bit on it it can easily outrank a .com ... it only depends on you

[Kecia]

.com is the best when it comes to domain names. .info catches a lot of flack nowadays because it is cheap and many spammers buy them in bulk to push their junk. I have heard many people say that .info will not rank as high as a .com or .net because google knows of this situation. Most people avoid .info like the plague.

A .net should be your second choice if you are unable to get a .com for a key phrase. They tend to rank almost as well as a .com.

Having said all that, the extension isn't the only factor when trying to rank. Make sure you post quality content and get good backlinks as well.

[Paleochora]

Well done Gmoney38. I suspect that there is so much guff spoken about the ranking capabilities of these domains on both sides of the arguement.

Let's hope someone who really knows (if there is anyone outside of the search engine's inner circles) can chime in on this thread.

As far as I can tell, the only advantage of having .com is that people think of this when they think of the internet. So some non-savvies may add .com onto searches or even use the browser address bar, not knowing the address of what they want and will just throw .com at the end of what would be a long tail keyword.

[Martin2010]

It all depends on what your using your site for really.

.com is always better than the rest but if you are after a domain name and it's taken then you can look for the other suffix's in order of .org, .net, .co.uk, .biz, .info etc.....

If you are using the domain purely for link building then there is nothing wrong with going for .info.

it's been known that .org and .net sites do better than some .com sites but if you can get .com then go for it.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by gmoney38

1. Is there a true difference in how your site will rank having one over the other of these domains.

No, it's utter nonsense.

Different TLD extensions don't affect SEO at all. It's just an urban myth of internet marketing.

Google's own Matt Cutts has made this very clear.

He's said it repeatedly and consistently.

He's said it in interviews, on video and in writing.

He's said it "on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields and in the streets, and in the hills". And he's invited people to quote him on it.

But there are still some people who don't accept it, of course, and apparently they genuinely believe that a .info/.biz/.whatever domain is going to be "harder to rank" than a .com. It's complete nonsense. The reason so many people believe it is actually not that difficult to understand, though: they see that (for example) very few .info domains rank in Google's number 1 position compared with the number of .com domains, and instead of realising that that's the inevitable outcome of a belief-system that says "they're harder to rank" so that very few people will use them in the first place for sites they want to rank well, they make the mistake of imagining that it's because they don't rank as well! Once you think about it, it's actually pretty easy to understand - but a lot of people don't think about it: they just accept what's always been widely believed, and so much so that even Google themselves can't make people collectively believe the truth.

People believe the opposite, and it "must" be true, because they read it on the internet! They don't look at the other evidence that tells them they're wrong.

We discuss it here about three or four times a week.

The recent discussions include this thread, this thread, this thread, this one, this one, this one and then there are about 50 others.

[dhigler]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

No, it's utter nonsense.

Domain extensions don't affect SEO at all. It's just an urban myth of internet marketing.

Google's own Matt Cutts has made this very clear.

He's said it repeatedly and consistently.

He's said it in interviews, on video and in writing.

He's said it "on the beaches, on the landing grounds, in the fields and in the streets, and in the hills". And he's invited people to quote him on it.

But there are still some people who don't accept it, of course, and apparently they genuinely believe that a .info/.biz/.whatever domain is going to be harder to rank than a .com.

It "must" be true, because they read it on the internet!

We discuss it here about three or four times a week.

The recent discussions include this thread, this thread, this thread, this one, this one, this one and then there are about 50 others.

Thank you Alexa. I own every type of extension and one is no better than the other.

My process is very simple. I look to have my keywords included in my url first. Then I search the first few pages of google to see if my exact url shows up with any of the aformentioned extensions.

If dogtraining .com is unavailable, for example, but dogtraining .net is available, and that first URL isn't ranking on the first few pages, I know I can get my .net to rank there (or my .info, my .biz, etc.) no matter the competition level (within reason, of course).

The extensions mean absolutely nothing from an seo perspective. I know this because I have tested this myself many times.

[cindybidar]

I'm certainly no SEO expert, so I can't speak to how .infos stack up against .coms in the SERPs. However, to real people (you know, the ones with the credit cards?) I think .com will win out every time. If I'm looking for a solution to a problem, and I'm presented with a number-one ranking .info domain versus a number-two ranked .com - or even a number-five or seven - I'm going to avoid the .info every single time.

Maybe it's just me.

[George Phillip]

For business, .com or .inc is more trustworthy.

For making money from online blogs etc, .anything will do. It doesn't matter the extension, its just SEO urban legend. But there is strong proof that a well aged domain or a domain helps.

[treevee]

My deciding factor in which to choose is..... the cheapest I can get as long as it has my keyword in it without a lot of the "-", "the", "site", "blah, blah blah" added to it!! And that's another subject that I've heard mixed opinions on --- whether to include other words alongside the keyword!
EX: "dating service .com" as opposed to "the dating service site .com"

[littlekid]

dot com has many advantages i think (eventhough i did not know about all of advantages). first of all: easy to remember. because dot com is the firstly domain that made.. if we see the price different from dot com and dot info, we can see what result would we get. more price we sow, more advantages we will reap..

[Fun to Write]

I always use .COM. Most domains that rank well are .COM. I know some people say they have had success with .INFO, but I've never used it.

In my situation, when a keyword domain name is already taken in its basic form, I just add a number or another word to the beginning or end to make it unique so I can use the .COM. There are so many word combinations that I haven't found a reason to bother with those others.

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Kecia08

I have heard many people say that .info will not rank as high as a .com or .net because google knows of this situation

Google the following bold terms below...

This does beg the question, have you ever searched for info on Noam Chomsky? How about regular expressions, roman coins,craft ideas, or how to check your page rank? Maybe you've never needed to do some research to find out if New York was a sanctuary city or to find out something about New York transit. Did you ever look into Spain tourism?. Oh, and have you thought about moving your money to a local bank before you go shopping on Black Friday?

I guess they didn't get that memo.

Originally Posted by cindybidar

Maybe it's just me.

It isn't just you but it is just the jaded and prejudiced IM and Domainer community. I have several product .infos in 'regular people niches' where I sell products that do well. They're also great for affiliate sites.

[cindybidar]

Originally Posted by bgmacaw

It isn't just you but it is just the jaded and prejudiced IM and Domainer community.

That's probably true!

[LilBlackDress]

I have done well with .info sites also.

BUT even though I have a lot of extensions, I sometimes find myself inadvertantly typing in the .com version for my own non .com sites. And people tend to think of the .com extension first.
In addition, since there is the perception that .com's are better, it is possible that a .com might sell for more.

[cassie_camay]

.INFO - for informative sites like directory sites or yellow pages site
.COM - for commercial sites or this is the one used generally by all websites
.NET - ( have not experienced and tried the usage for it so pardon me)

[iobeek]

Originally Posted by cindybidar

I'm certainly no SEO expert, so I can't speak to how .infos stack up against .coms in the SERPs. However, to real people (you know, the ones with the credit cards?) I think .com will win out every time. If I'm looking for a solution to a problem, and I'm presented with a number-one ranking .info domain versus a number-two ranked .com - or even a number-five or seven - I'm going to avoid the .info every single time.

Maybe it's just me.

Yep it's just you....

[howinfo]

Alexa Smith already said exactly what I wanted to say but lot better so there is not much to add. Just that, from my personal experience with .info extension, it has worked really well, it ranks really well, pulls lot of people on the site who are looking for information and it makes sense as an extension as .com or any other extension would not work with this domain name.

. info is certainly the best extension for informational website.

Good site for more info: www.info.info

[BloggerDeen]

According to my experience Google do treat the domains differently. So whever possible opt for .com and then if that is not available go for .net otherwise rest.

[realtexas]

.com is more widely known, so it does rank higher in my opinion. now choosing between .INFO, .COM, .NET really depends on what your site is about.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by realtexas

.com is more widely known, so it does rank higher in my opinion.

I was with you right up until the word "so". We must have learned logic differently. But welcome to the Warrior Forum!

[Tum]

While your talking about domains again !

It seems that many say that it doesnt matter about what type of domain name you buy, but does it matter if you use sub domains, rather than getting a new domain.

Like the about.com domain.

I mean you could have any domain name you want then.

forextrading.about.com
bonsaitree.about.com

etc

Or does this make a big difference for ranking your sites ?

[paulie888]

George, the bottom line is that it doesn't matter. What matters is getting the keywords you want to rank for in the domain (exact match is best), and in many cases the .info is your only available option. With everything else being equal, an exact match .info domain is going to outperform a .com that isn't an exact match for the keyword any day, and that is a fact.

Paul

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by realtexas

.com is more widely known, so it does rank higher in my opinion.

Originally Posted by BloggerDeen

According to my experience Google do treat the domains differently.

Google the following bold terms below...

This does beg the question, have you ever searched for info on Noam Chomsky? How about regular expressions, roman coins,craft ideas, or how to check your page rank? Maybe you've never needed to do some research to find out if New York was a sanctuary city or to find out something about New York transit. Did you ever look into Spain tourism?. Oh, and have you thought about moving your money to a local bank before you go shopping on Black Friday?

Guess they didn't get your memo...

[George Pitts]

Thanks everyone this is a good review. Like I said before there was so many different threads about each individual one I thought I would merge them together and get the story on them all

[Gary King]

It's another argument about domain extensions... lol

I have .com, .net and .info domains ranking well for their targeted keywords - and YES, the .net and .info names are ranked above competing .coms from others.

If you're NOT talking pure SEO - i.e., people are going to TYPE IN your web site address, then IMHO, .com is always better because people will type that out of habit (in my experience!)

Have an awesome day!

Gary

[IMStudentforlife]

Originally Posted by Paleochora

As far as I can tell, the only advantage of having .com is that people think of this when they think of the internet. So some non-savvies may add .com onto searches or even use the browser address bar, not knowing the address of what they want and will just throw .com at the end of what would be a long tail keyword.

My thoughts exactly, I've even caught myself telling someone about a website and said .com when it was a .net. I don't see the difference personally in a .info.

I've heard them being claimed as spammy looking or for the dark side of IM..

The only reason I could see having a .com is for possible branding purposes.

Maybe in a decade or so people will stop just thinking about .com names solely and open up to the other domain name extensions.
That will only happen with education...

[LetsGoViral]

Originally Posted by SeoWizzard

it is pretty well known that .com 's are ranking better than the rest. Then most people see the next best choice as .net As for .info their original purpose is for information websites, but many people use .info for other things too. If you work a bit on it it can easily outrank a .com ... it only depends on you

I heard quite the contrary. Google is not discriminating sites based on domain extensions.

[hovirag]

I wonder why some people tend to hurt others just for having a different opinion on the topic...
Isn't this the place to share our experince???

Regarding the original question:
info can be as good as com what regards SEO, on the other hand if you want to reach worldwide don't choose co.uk which is for UK market only. It all comes down to the question what you want to use your site for.

There is another interesting topic here when choosing the url: most internet marketers would warn you not to have hyphen in there as it is bad for SEO ranking. One of my sites has got two hyphens in and still ranks first, second in google.

[paulie888]

Originally Posted by hovirag

I wonder why some people tend to hurt others just for having a different opinion on the topic...
Isn't this the place to share our experince???

Regarding the original question:
info can be as good as com what regards SEO, on the other hand if you want to reach worldwide don't choose co.uk which is for UK market only. It all comes down to the question what you want to use your site for.

There is another interesting topic here when choosing the url: most internet marketers would warn you not to have hyphen in there as it is bad for SEO ranking. One of my sites has got two hyphens in and still ranks first, second in google.

Hyphens are basically a non-issue when it comes to ranking a domain. As long as your keywords are in the domain, it really shouldn't matter if they're separated by hyphens - you should still be able to rank for it.

[WPblogmatic Niche Blogs]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

No, it's utter nonsense.

Domain extensions don't affect SEO at all. It's just an urban myth of internet marketing.

Google's own Matt Cutts has made this very clear.

But there are still some people who don't accept it, of course, and apparently they genuinely believe that a .info/.biz/.whatever domain is going to be "harder to rank" than a .com. It's complete nonsense. The reason so many people believe it is actually not that difficult to understand, though: they see that (for example) very few .info domains rank in Google's number 1 position compared with the number of .com domains, and instead of realising that that's the inevitable outcome of a belief-system that says "they're harder to rank" so that very few people will use them in the first place for sites they want to rank well, they make the mistake of imagining that it's because they don't rank as well! Once you think about it, it's actually pretty easy to understand - but a lot of people don't think about it: they just accept what's always been widely believed, and so much so that even Google themselves can't make people collectively believe the truth.

People believe the opposite, and it "must" be true, because they read it on the internet! They don't look at the other evidence that tells them they're wrong.

All that may be true, however, the fact remains that .info sites are typically associated with thin or spam style sites and people tend not to click on them for that very reason.

Sure, you may only pay $1 for a .info and sure it "may" rank as well as a .com, but if people don't click your listing because they feel its just another spam/Adsense site, you are just wasting your time and effort!

And what, you think Google is not aware that .info's are typically bought for building multiple spam sites???

The extra investment in a .com will always payoff in better traffic and better conversions.

[Randy Daugherty]

.com is obviously the best choice and this is very friendly to the search engine...

[Jeff Henshaw]

Hyphens are basically a non-issue when it comes to ranking a domain. As long as your keywords are in the domain, it really shouldn't matter if they're separated by hyphens - you should still be able to rank for it.

I agree.

Indeed, I'm fairly sure (from some of my rankings) that most SE spiders either can't, or don't, recognize (or simply ignore) hyphens.

Although off topic; hyphens make the domain name easier to read for humans, in circumstances when joined keywords in the domain name are difficult for humans to read and remember. Of course this only applies if the domain name is targeted at both SE spiders and humans.

Just my thoughts,

Jeff.

[Chris Thompson]

Over the last week I started looking for new domains so that I could outsource a system (course) that I bought for my team to use.

I did a lot of reading on the .com/net/org versus "other" top level domains and I looked up what Matt Cutts said about it. He did indeed say that Google does not care what TLD you use, but he also seems to have said they "might" care at some point.

Anyway, for whatever it's worth, I bought a .biz domain last week and I'll not hesitate to do so in the future (along with .info).

I follow a technical industry where a well known industry expert runs a .info site and it has massive PR because of its quality content. I can't see Google ever punishing a TLD en-masse. It would go against what they stand for.

My bet is Google will continue to evaluate your content as the primary indicator for ranking (along with quality of links, of course).

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by WPblogmatic Niche Blogs

And what, you think Google is not aware that .info's are typically bought for building multiple spam sites???

And what, you think Google is not aware that .com's are often bought for building multiple spam sites???

And what, you can't take the time to read the whole thread either?

[bgmacaw]

Originally Posted by Randy Daugherty

.com is obviously the best choice and this is very friendly to the search engine...

Google the following bold terms below...

This does beg the question, have you ever searched for info on Noam Chomsky? How about regular expressions, roman coins,craft ideas, or how to check your page rank? Maybe you've never needed to do some research to find out if New York was a sanctuary city or to find out something about New York transit. Did you ever look into Spain tourism?. Oh, and have you thought about moving your money to a local bank before you go shopping on Black Friday?

Guess they didn't get your memo...

[paulgl]

Bgmacaw, the WF needs to give you a seek and destroy mod.
Any thread like this gets your post, then is locked. Or destroyed.

Paul

[Erica Leggett]

I have like 30 domains, all mixed with .com, .info, .net and not one of them out-shines the other....
Because each site is ranking according to the work I put into them.

so to answer...it doesn't matter what the tld is as the biggest baddest .com site won't rank worth a crap either if the work isn't put into it for it to rank high.

[crumpet]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

No, it's utter nonsense.

haha, I love how strong your opinion is on this topic. Your name keep popping up in every thread on the subject!

I am about to launch a .info website. You will be the first to know about its success in google

Cheers for the insight-
Jono

[dagaul101]

It's best if you can get the .com since the view (nmt necessarily from the search engines) but from users is that info domains are usually low quality

[Gary Ning Lo]

Don't take the risk on using .info/.net

Just pick a .com and you'll be fine

Cheers,

~Gary

[CDarklock]

Originally Posted by gmoney38

1. Is there a true difference in how your site will rank having one over the other of these domains.

No.

But people are stupid and can't figure this out, so if you are SELLING a site, you will get more and better offers if it is on a .com domain.

[Rus Sells]

Originally Posted by garytsang

Don't take the risk on using .info/.net

Just pick a .com and you'll be fine

Cheers,

~Gary

What precisely is the risk involved with owning a .info or .net?

Originally Posted by dagaul101

It's best if you can get the .com since the view (nmt necessarily from the search engines) but from users is that info domains are usually low quality

And you base that on what FACTS?

[AMiRU]

As for me, I think it is best to use other extension when a dot com is not available. Remember, people tends to assume that all website ends with a dot com.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by dagaul101

the view (nmt necessarily from the search engines) but from users is that info domains are usually low quality

I think you're just repeating "urban myths", Dagaul, because when I researched this, my findings were exactly the opposite.

Have you asked "users" for their opinions on this subject?

I have. In many different niches. And I've explained what they told me here.

This whole thread may help you out, Dagaul: you're laboring under a misapprehension, at the moment.

Originally Posted by ThinhPhanHuynh

If you have a .info and .com I'm very positive that the SE will rank the .com much higher than the .info.

Then I think you haven't read many threads here in which the evidence is discussed, and I don't believe you've even read this one, in which you're posting.

And I think you haven't looked at what Google and Matt Cutts say at great length and in great detail on this subject, because they say the exact opposite and explain the reasons for it.

And I think you haven't read any introductory SEO textbooks, because they also say the exact opposite and explain the reasons for it.

In other words, however "very positive" you are, I think you're completely mistaken.

[Rob Howard]

Alexa, do you ever get a headache beating that logical brain or yours against the wall daily on the WF?

You seem to be one of the few with a shred of common sense. Just sayin'.



Rob

[nnsjw702]

.com will always rank better than the rest.

One should always prefer .com domain, if it is not available then you can go for .net, .org

.info and rest are very difficult to get ranked.

[Rob Howard]

Originally Posted by nnsjw702

.com will always rank better than the rest.

One should always prefer .com domain, if it is not available then you can go for .net, .org

.info and rest are very difficult to get ranked.

Someone hasn't read the entire thread.

[Rus Sells]

This thread is full of....

[crumpet]

I went with .info. Perfect match with my keyword so I highly doubt there was a better alternative.

By the sounds of it the only downside with a .info is peoples opinions of it. But hey, googles the one ranking me not them!