Are .info domains harder to rank in Google SERPs than .com?

[cpafanatic]

I set up a couple .com WP micro-niche blogs a day on average, and then use auto-blogging, and backlinks to try and rank them... My question is: my only day-to-day expense is buying the .com domains, if I were to buy the much cheaper .info domains instead would I have a harder time getting the sites ranked in Google/MSN?

Thanks for the help guys

[sasai]

does anyone have a .com and .info with exactly same contents, same layouts, same backlinks and everything the same. Hard to tell

[laurie390]

I am not sure if they are harder to rank, but I think they are harder for people to remember. If you want people to get to your site easily, I think a .com is much better because most people put that in automatically.

[Natlex]

Originally Posted by laurie390

I am not sure if they are harder to rank, but I think they are harder for people to remember. If you want people to get to your site easily, I think a .com is much better because most people put that in automatically.

Ya, that's true if you are going for a brand name type domain but if you are just making one for adsense or... autoblogs (not too sure why you are wasting your time on those...) than .info is probably just as good for general ranking. However, you don't really get an exact match bonus with .info the same way .net/.org/.com have one if you have the exact keyword in the domain.

[dadamson]

Through my experimentation on exact content structures, themes, kws etc over a variety of domains here is the order of easiest to rank:

1. .com
2. .net
3. .org
4. .info

etc.

To summarise, .com is the best, .net is the next best thing when a .com is taken, but .info is still very good!

Hope that helps,
-Dave

[minisite]

Originally Posted by Natlex

However, you don't really get an exact match bonus with .info the same way .net/.org/.com have one if you have the exact keyword in the domain.

I have to disagree with this statement. I have an exact match domain that has dot info extension which I've launched a last week and it is currently number 3 on the first page of Google for a very competitive keyword. I think the reason that a lot of people are NOT using the dot info extension or rather avoiding it is because it has been branded as a spam extension. Many spammers throughout the internet have used these extension since they are very inexpensive ($0.99 to register) and it doesn't hurt them in the pocket if they loose the domain. But Google's algorithm has improve significantly in the last five years that it has the ability to detect many spam websites a like determined blood hound. It detects not just websites with .info extensions but many spam websites with a .com, .net, .org, etc etc. If you put unique and quality contents on any domain extension including dot info, the Big G will be kind to it.

[cpafanatic]

Thanks for the advice everyone, it looks like I'll be sticking to .com(s) for now... I agree on the branding point

Originally Posted by Natlex

Ya, that's true if you are going for a brand name type domain but if you are just making one for adsense or... autoblogs (not too sure why you are wasting your time on those...) than .info is probably just as good for general ranking. However, you don't really get an exact match bonus with .info the same way .net/.org/.com have one if you have the exact keyword in the domain.

I experimented with PPC and CPA for years and never made much money... Bought countless WSOs and other products, but never really found a system that worked so I started setting up a couple blogs in micro-niches everyday and then 'backlinking' them together to help with rankings. I have a few hundred sites now, all in pretty low competition markets making me $1-$12/day on average each... Some sell Amazon products, some Clickbank, some I just build e-mail lists to target later.

For example, I was able to set up a scuba diving site in an afternoon, and since Google considers "scuba diving" a local search. I was able to rank in multiple cities pretty quickly... The site gives basically recycled info about scuba diving, gives resources, and has some amazon products related to the articles. This site generates me consistent income everyday. It's definitely time consuming, but I could never seem to figure the other things out. This will get me some capital to one day try and re-learn PPC, or maybe PPV/Media Buys

Just my 2c

[danlew]

Google does a much better job at ranking .com .net and .org better then the rest. In my experience .info's are quite difficult to rank for.

[JSProjects]

Nope. Just target the right keywords, do proper on-page SEO, and have better backlinks than your competition.

I've ranked a decent number of .info domains pretty easily.