.info extension reputation..

[Sornie Samante]

Hi,

When I suggested .info domain extension for the a niche blog, they said that .info got a bad reputation.. is this valid? Please let me know..

Thanks for your help.

[CDarklock]

The .info domain extension does have a bad reputation...

Among people who buy domain names.

Nobody else cares. Not Google, not Bing, not the general public. Nobody.

[Richard Van]

I have several .info sites that do very well.

Information sites are good to have on .info domains as well, funnily enough.

May I ask who the "they" were that told you they had a "bad" reputation? Do you know what the .info did to get the bad reputation? Was it a naughty boy or something?

[omrishabbat]

I don't agree. In fact, its harder to compete with .info! Google knows that its a cheap domain and many use it for spamming. Its not impossible because it is possible to rank high, however you need prove yourself more.
I suggest you, if you really serious to go with the old fashioned .com...

[CDarklock]

Originally Posted by omrishabbat

Google knows that its a cheap domain

Nope. Wrong.

Spammers know that it's a cheap domain.

If you want to buy 200 crap domains, are you going to spend $2,500 on .com registrations?

Hell no! You're going to buy .info domains for under $500. That leaves you $10 per domain to hire some Filipino or Indian guy to put a website on it.

What makes it "hard to compete" with these domains is that you have to do a better job than a Filipino or Indian will do for $10.

Which, judging from your English, may actually be a problem for you.

Google - and all the other search engines, for that matter - will not pay a damn bit of attention to the domain extension of your website. They only care what you have put on it.

[Richard Van]

Originally Posted by CDarklock

Google - and all the other search engines, for that matter - will not pay a damn bit of attention to the domain extension of your website. They only care what you have put on it.

Sornie,

If you take one bit of information from this thread, take the quote above.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by omrishabbat

In fact, its harder to compete with .info! Google knows that its a cheap domain and many use it for spamming.

Poor Matt Cutts must be going blue in the face from all his repeated, consistent and concerted efforts to dispel this nonsensical myth, in writing and on video, on his own blog and on Google's blog. And yet still people like to regurgitate this urban myth of internet marketing ... and there are always others willing to believe it, too!

[Chris Kent]

Who is "they"? What a load of BS. My best site is a .info Wordpress site. Every year Google gives it more and more love even though I haven't updated it in 3 years.

Nothing wrong with .info at all.

[DireStraits]

Does this forum's search function also have a bad reputation?

Because sometimes it seems like everyone deliberately avoids it like the plague.

[Dennis Dz]

What I've gathered from this thread is that the extension doesn't matter much at all. But I've also heard that Google 'loves' .edu and .gov sites. Is that true?

[kstark]

Originally Posted by Richard Van

May I ask who the "they" were that told you they had a "bad" reputation? Do you know what the .info did to get the bad reputation? Was it a naughty boy or something?

That made me laugh---oh that naughty boy Dot Info! Naughty naughty!

[sbucciarel]

Originally Posted by omrishabbat

I don't agree. In fact, its harder to compete with .info! Google knows that its a cheap domain and many use it for spamming. Its not impossible because it is possible to rank high, however you need prove yourself more.
I suggest you, if you really serious to go with the old fashioned .com...

This theory has been disproven over and over again. .info rank if you do the SEO work, and there are a lot of people here making bank on infos.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by Deez23

I've also heard that Google 'loves' .edu and .gov sites. Is that true?

Yes and no ... (but mostly "no").

It's not the fact that they're .edu and .gov sites that Google loves. Google loves "authority sites" and some .edu and .gov sites are authority sites.

It's explained in detail here.

[B.Smit]

A number of good points have been made in this thread (and other similar threads in this recurring debate). So instead of repeating what's already been said, allow me to add a few useful links:

Home Page | .INFO
.info - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
mta.info | Home Page (as an example of an actual .INFO site)

[stanwhisky]

If you search for 'spain' in google, spain.info rank #2
It's just a matter of your content.
If you have a .info with a bad content or just few line of words or links, G will drop them anyway

with their auto-algo.
If you content is valuable, why not?

[celente]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

Poor Matt Cutts must be going blue in the face from all his repeated, consistent and concerted efforts to dispel this nonsensical myth, in writing and on video, on his own blog and on Google's blog. And yet still people like to regurgitate this urban myth of internet marketing ... and there are always others willing to believe it, too!

yes i hate this, but its happening time and time again.

Just like spnning. Why not just spit out unique original content. that has always worked fo me.

[Psst]

Originally Posted by Richard Van

May I ask who the "they" were that told you they had a "bad" reputation? Do you know what the .info did to get the bad reputation? Was it a naughty boy or something?

As far as "bad" reputation goes, yes they had and still have a bad reputation among the general public (but only among a very small number of people and I'm not sure what the Search engines think about this) and it's because .info domains have been used unethically by spammers, scammers and all other tech evildoers to spam, scam or anything like that.

And those people who were a victim of these illegal deeds or those who heard other's victim stories will most likely avoid clicking your .info link just like many affiliate marketers avoid MLM for no reason but it's bad old story.

But you don't have to overthink it or worry about it. the number of people that will likely avoid your .info links are very very minimal and you don't have to be concerned about them especially if you are going to use the domain name to redirect to an affiliate link or host just another site

But still if you are going to build a blog (especially if you intend to brand it or will benefit from direct traffic like in video marketing), you are better off going with .com domains -- not for the fear of being deemed a scammer but for remembrance' sake.

[JSProjects]

Originally Posted by CDarklock

The .info domain extension does have a bad reputation...

Among people who buy domain names.

Nobody else cares. Not Google, not Bing, not the general public. Nobody.

This.

But hey, the more people that shy away from .info domains, the more high quality .info domains will be available. So it's fine by me.

[NZB]

Google and other search engines pay attention to the content.

Extensions look cool for people and possibly for trade. Of course It is easier to remember domain with the .com extension.

Info domains have a bad reputation, but it is already a myth that are treated worse by Google.

[paulgl]

I vowed never to visit these threads....I'm glad I broke that!

This thread rocks!

Enjoy it while it lasts: Caliban, Alexa, Suzanne, et. al., all in
one thread here, in this part of the forum...

It don't get no better'n that!

Paul

[Justin Stowe]

Maybe its all of the domain name registrars that spread the word about .infos being bad.

If I had 2 functionally identical products for sale but could charge 6x the price for one, I would say the cheap one is naughty too :-)

[Sornie Samante]

I have enjoyed all your thoughts guys! Im learning and developed my own Idea.

Cheers!
Sornie

[razor99]

but because of geo location and the google search engine your using it can be harder too rank .info sites right?

[paulgl]

Originally Posted by razor99

but because of geo location and the google search engine your using it can be harder too rank .info sites right?

Judging by that last post, perhaps some people's geo location is left
of Mars.

Paul

[howinfo]

Originally Posted by sornie

Hi,

When I suggested .info domain extension for the a niche blog, they said that .info got a bad reputation.. is this valid? Please let me know..

Thanks for your help.

No, .info does not have a bad reputation on the contrary .info has very good reputation. It is actually the most successful New top-level domain (TLD) ever launched and it is growing fast in popularity.

The best use of .info is for informational websites but nowadays people use the extension for wide variety of web projects. As lot of people searching for information online then the word 'info' will really help you to draw visitors to your site, I certainly have noticed that with our site that is on .info extension.

As Cdarclock mention, that .info might not be that popular among domainers, then when you go to some domaining forums like NamePros.com or some others you can see that .info is actually getting quite popular among the domain sellers as well and some good .info sales you can see on Sedo will show that too.

And as far as ranking is concerned .info ranks very well. If someone says that it is harder to rank than some other domain extension then it is something that they are doing wrong and not the extension of the domain. How else you would explain that some people has no trouble ranking .info at all. It is always makes me laugh that people would blame the domain extension out of all things if they can not get their site rank as good as they want but you will see that people not only blame .info they also blame .net .org .biz and so on, they might as well blame www. then.

[xxxJamesxxx]

I use them all the time when I build Adsense sites.

James

[Johnsonton]

Well, from my view, I had seen that .info domains have bad reputation, most of the spammers have used it, For an example, when I was searching article directories, I have seen lots of .info sites, but nothing had good PR or even not properly maintained. I think those extensions have a bad remark unless you are offering any specific and valued information to your user. For promoting products or services, I would not recommend to have .info domains.

[nagendrabandi1980]

Hey Sorni,
.info sites are never been with bad reputation, I have most of my websites as .info and they are doing pretty better, ignore on those false statements and just focus on your work, all the very best.

[howinfo]

Originally Posted by Johnsonton

Well, from my view, I had seen that .info domains have bad reputation, most of the spammers have used it, For an example, when I was searching article directories, I have seen lots of .info sites, but nothing had good PR or even not properly maintained. I think those extensions have a bad remark unless you are offering any specific and valued information to your user. For promoting products or services, I would not recommend to have .info domains.

Do you have a statistic about how many spammers use .com and how many .info’s or some other extension? How many sites on other extension are there that are PR0? I run article directory on .info domain and it went to PR 3 very fast and it is very well maintained.

[danilolee]

Web users are most familiar with dot com. However, I have one dot info website which is ranking pretty well on the SERPs. I tend to get dot info for informational website and dot com for actual business websites.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by Johnsonton

I had seen that .info domains have bad reputation, most of the spammers have used it

This is such nonsense.

Do you have any idea how many .info and .com domains have been registered, and what the numerical discrepancy is between the two?! Far more spammers use .com domains.

Originally Posted by Johnsonton

For promoting products or services, I would not recommend to have .info domains.

Most of my successful, growing business is deliberately based on .info domains.

I do buy the .com's as well (just to make sure that nobody else can own them) but I simply redirect them to the .info ones I'm using for my business.

I do it that way round because my customers prefer to see ".info" than ".com" (I asked them). Understandly, too. They tend to feel that ".info" is for an "informational site" (people respect this), whereas ".com" is "just someone trying to promote and sell things" (people don't respect that as much).

Customers don't think like marketers.

The idea that .info domains "don't rank as well as a .com" is, frankly, ludicrous. It's entirely ill-informed. It's a myth.

[Alex Barboza]

Originally Posted by Alexa Smith

Most of my successful, growing business is deliberately based on .info domains. I do buy the .com's as well (just to make sure that nobody else can own them) but I simply redirect them to the .info ones I'm using for my business. I do it that way round because my customers prefer to see ".info" than ".com" (I asked them). Understandly, too. They tend to feel that ".info" is for an "informational site" (people respect this), whereas ".com" is "just someone trying to promote and sell things" (people don't respect that as much). Customers don't think like marketers.

Did you ask your costumers why they prefer .info? What was their response?

[imdomination]

Personally, I've never used a .info domain. However, that said I have seen a handful of competitive terms ranking .info websites, including one where the .com/.net/.info were all on page 1, and the .info was the highest ranked of the three.

So if you're really set on using a .info domain, I wouldn't worry too much about it.

[Alexa Smith]

Originally Posted by Alex Barboza

Did you ask your costumers why they prefer .info? What was their response?

I asked them please to reply to me if they had any preferences, thoughts, feelings about the whole issue of domain-extensions, and what they want to see and why. I mentioned the TLD's (I missed out .biz, which I've never used - actually I forgot about it when I wrote the email ) and I asked in as non-directive a way as I could.

I was using mostly .com's, not .info's, at the time I did this.

Of course, the proportion who actually replied was on the low side, but I do have a lot of different lists in different niches, so that was still quite a lot of people.

The majority of those who expressed any preference - across a wide range of niches - did so for .info, typically for the reasons mentioned above.

I ought to add that I'm not involved in the "IM-advice" or "MMO" niches. We're talking about "customers" here, not "customers who happen also to be marketers". Marketers, of course, like .com's.

[howinfo]

Originally Posted by Alex Barboza

Did you ask your costumers why they prefer .info? What was their response?

When our site that is on .info started to take off and became our main focus then I started asking people what they think if they see a domain name with .info extension and they always associate it with the information and credible resource. As some people have some confusion or disagreement about the meaning of some other domain extension then .info always seems to be very easy to understand. But I think what really gets people to click to your link on the search result mainly is your site title and site description and not so much the domain name or domain extension.

[fthomas137]

I too have found that .info sites work as well as any other. No more excuses guys and gals.

Write good engaging info, and backlink you site and you'll do fine.

Frank

[ashokseo]

Originally Posted by sornie

Hi,

When I suggested .info domain extension for the a niche blog, they said that .info got a bad reputation.. is this valid? Please let me know..

Thanks for your help.

No, It's not true

None of search engines care about domain extension. It's all about quality of content and backlinks, nothing else