does your domain extension matter? .com, .info, .biz etc

[matrix1989]

so im looking at buying a domain and i can get some extensions much cheaper than others. does it matter which one you get? (.com,.biz,.net etc)

does this affect SEO?

thanks in advance, Matrix

[Adam Carn]

.com is the most popular, and we're all mentally programmed to put .com at the end of everything these days. It's the easiest to remember, most recognised extension. For SEO it doesn't matter what extension you have.

Hope that helps.

Thanks,
Adam

[rcwilson4au]

It does not matter for SEO... however, .com is BY FAR the most popular. It will be much easier to drive traffic to a .com site b/c visitors assume every website is a .com. I would not bother with any of the others.

[Revolves]

.info's may cost as low as $.89 per domain but the renewal fees cost as much as that of a .com, If the domain name you want is available in .com,.net or .org extension then by all means get it.

Choose a good registrar like Moniker, Godaddy, Name , Namecheap for your domains.

Revolves

[reapr]

From my experience it does not matter. It is all about backlinks and on page optimization.

I use to think it made a difference. If you can get the .com great if not then net then or then biz.

I think what I have learned from my own experience having the keyword in the domain name is more important than .com .net .org or .biz.

[opportunites]

Domains end .com are the most popular and they rank very well... but these days domains end in .org rank really will in search engine.
But these considerations don't matter if your page is not well optimized and your content is not build around targeted keywords...

[Jim Parker]

In terms of SEO, domain name extension does not play a very important role, however, .com is the best domain name TLD and I think you should choose it if possible, however, if you are targeting a specific Country, say for example, UK for traffic, you can also consider a .co.uk domain name extension.

[bankrolls]

Originally Posted by rcwilson4au

It does not matter for SEO... however, .com is BY FAR the most popular. It will be much easier to drive traffic to a .com site b/c visitors assume every website is a .com. I would not bother with any of the others.

Wrong. Completely Wrong. Yes, domain extension does matter. Dont you remember when google kicked off...what was it, EVERY .info domain name from their index due to spamming?

Google gives credit to age, that being said .com is king because its old as hell. .net comes in second and .org comes in at third. Anyone who tells you to buy a .biz domain name is a moron. No, theres nothing wrong with them, and yes, google claims they are not biased towards extensions. Its not true, and anyone with an ounce of experience in seo will tell you the same.

Dont believe me? Google FREE POKER MONEY, and lookup the backlinks for the top 10 ranking domains. Then explain to me why every domain has over 5k backlinks, except freepokermoney.com, freepokermoney.net, and freepokermoney.org. Why doesn't freepokermoney.biz rank, or why not freepokermoney.info? Because google is biased towards TLD, and to deny it is to deny yourself the opportunity to achieve top rankings.

For those who are to lazy to verify what I stated above, for reference each of those page 1 ranking domains has less than 50 backlinks on page one ranking with the big dogs with over 100k in the #1 position. The .info and .biz, as well as .pro all have more backlinks than the aged gTLDs mentioned above, and are nowhere to be seen. The bottom line is BUY a trusted TLD, not the newest garbage .pro or .it domains.

[Zach Booker]

^ Dude's right.

Granted I have never tried to work with anything other than .com, .net, or .org but the results in the search engines are obvious.

It seems that anything other then the above mentioned 3 don't have trust in Google's eyes and are almost looked down upon.

They have to work twice as hard to get half the results.

When it comes right down to it if your keyword has more then 2 words in it you'll be able to play around with it enough to get one of the big three extensions.

E.g: your-domain.com yourdomain.net

Personally, even though I feel very strongly that the extension does matter, why risk it?

Maybe bankrolls and I are both terribly wrong - but what if we aren't? Do you want to waste time and effort trying to rank a .info to only find it harder then ranking a .com

Zach

P.S- As stated above people just like .com's better anyway. Their easier on the eyes.

[JohnMcCabe]

Back in September, 2006, Wired magazine ran an article on the spread of splogs (spam blogs). Because .info domains are so much cheaper than other domains, they were/are a favorite of splog farmers. More than one service, including Technorati if I recall correctly, was quoted as assuming that anything with a .info extension was spam.

FWIW...

[Havenhood]

Yes, it does matter and .net, .org domains rank better (PR) than .com domains on average.

[edmltw]

Have you guys ever heard of .ws? LoL

[JoeHughes]

bankrolls and the other guys are spot on. Particularly keep away from .info as the spammers love this extension because they are cheap, so Google does not look very kindly on them.

If your selling a digital download go for .com however its country specific use that country's extension as searchers are more likely to click on your url if its a country specific product.

[bgmacaw]

Regular-Expressions.info - Regex Tutorial, Examples and Reference - Regexp Patterns

The horror! A .info with hyphen!! It's PR6!!! It ranks in the first page of Google for many related keyword terms!!! How did that happen?!?

Links, especially authority links, are what matters.

[achivement84]

The difference is really the value of the site. .com is more valuable than other domain types by far. .net is not too far behind. All other domain types aren't worth a lot, and is not recommended if you need the website to build a business.

[Jack Martin]

Originally Posted by rcwilson4au

It does not matter for SEO...

This is NOT TRUE.

Try this test. Buy exactly the same domain name with various extensions like .com, .info, .net, .biz, etc.

Then put identical content on all of them and watch which ones get ranked.

Every time I've done this, the .com ranks higher and faster than the others.

[Tony Sanford]

Hi there .com would be the best to use for domains for is the most common.

Originally Posted by bankrolls

Wrong. Completely Wrong. Yes, domain extension does matter. Dont you remember when google kicked off...what was it, EVERY .info domain name from their index due to spamming?

Google gives credit to age, that being said .com is king because its old as hell. .net comes in second and .org comes in at third. Anyone who tells you to buy a .biz domain name is a moron. No, theres nothing wrong with them, and yes, google claims they are not biased towards extensions. Its not true, and anyone with an ounce of experience in seo will tell you the same.

Dont believe me? Google FREE POKER MONEY, and lookup the backlinks for the top 10 ranking domains. Then explain to me why every domain has over 5k backlinks, except freepokermoney.com, freepokermoney.net, and freepokermoney.org. Why doesn't freepokermoney.biz rank, or why not freepokermoney.info? Because google is biased towards TLD, and to deny it is to deny yourself the opportunity to achieve top rankings.

For those who are to lazy to verify what I stated above, for reference each of those page 1 ranking domains has less than 50 backlinks on page one ranking with the big dogs with over 100k in the #1 position. The .info and .biz, as well as .pro all have more backlinks than the aged gTLDs mentioned above, and are nowhere to be seen. The bottom line is BUY a trusted TLD, not the newest garbage .pro or .it domains.

Boy your making friends left and right ... You seriously need to stop trolling and trying to force your freaking google opinion on other memebers of this forum. The age has nothing to do with it and the FACT is you can not tell how many backlinks a domain name has.. Not even google knows that because the FACT is they would have to spider billions of sites every single second of every single day.

To The OP: Adam Carn said it best ... Nothing more to say..

James

[SmashTweet]

My preference will always go for a .com, but I do have some .info domains ranking
very well in google.

Julie

[nichescape]

Originally Posted by JohnMcCabe

Back in September, 2006, Wired magazine ran an article on the spread of splogs (spam blogs). Because .info domains are so much cheaper than other domains, they were/are a favorite of splog farmers. More than one service, including Technorati if I recall correctly, was quoted as assuming that anything with a .info extension was spam.

FWIW...

Having been around in those days, I still tend to think of .info domains as junk. I happened to come across a .info site for our local public transportation system earlier tonight and I did a triple check to make sure I wasn't on some kind of scraper site or something.

If you're at all interested in the visitor experience and brandability of the domain, I'd stick with .com, .net or .org and only .net or .org if you can get a really good domain that's already taken in .com.

John

[reapr]

Originally Posted by TheRichJerksNet

Boy your making friends left and right ... You seriously need to stop trolling and trying to force your freaking google opinion on other memebers of this forum. The age has nothing to do with it and the FACT is you can not tell how many backlinks a domain name has.. Not even google knows that because the FACT is they would have to spider billions of sites every single second of every single day.

To The OP: Adam Carn said it best ... Nothing more to say..

James

Amen ...

and to

To bgmacaw's comment wierd huh go figure it happens quite a bit as you pointed out.

[reapr]

Originally Posted by bankrolls

Dont believe me? Google FREE POKER MONEY, and lookup the backlinks for the top 10 ranking domains. Then explain to me why every domain has over 5k backlinks, except freepokermoney.com, freepokermoney.net, and freepokermoney.org. Why doesn't freepokermoney.biz rank, or why not freepokermoney.info? Because google is biased towards TLD, and to deny it is to deny yourself the opportunity to achieve top rankings.

For those who are to lazy to verify what I stated above, for reference each of those page 1 ranking domains has less than 50 backlinks on page one ranking with the big dogs with over 100k in the #1 position. The .info and .biz, as well as .pro all have more backlinks than the aged gTLDs mentioned above, and are nowhere to be seen. The bottom line is BUY a trusted TLD, not the newest garbage .pro or .it domains.

Wrong again ...
How do you know all the backlinks not even Google shows them. I assume your using Yahoo to find them?
Did you ever think to stop that the PR of the backlinks play a much larger role in the ranking of the sites as opposed to the amount of links? I would rather have 5 or 6 pr 4-5 links pointing back to my site than have 100 PR 0 directory links pointing back. If I had to guess those .info and biz you refer to have lower quality backlinks. Like I said in my original post in this thread it is about the backlinks.

[lenlatimer]

Hi,
I think its largely psychological. We assocate .com with sucessful sites so that may affect clicks and preceived value. I think we all kind of assume that people will remember our URL and type com out of habit. I suspect that rarely happens though.

Originally Posted by lenlatimer

Hi,
I think its largely psychological. We assocate .com with sucessful sites so that may affect clicks and preceived value. I think we all kind of assume that people will remember our URL and type com out of habit. I suspect that rarely happens though.

Actually it's called curiosity .. Many will go to a .com just to see if it offers a better deal than the .net (or other ext's). Consumers are always looking for the best deal they can get and if a .com offers them that deal then they sure are going to type it in ...

This is why many will register a .net along with a .com (I know I do most of the time).

James

[Brian Johnson]

Over the past 90 days my assistant I have have launched
over 150 mini sites targeting halloween. These domains were
based on keyword phrases, 80% of the domains were based
on either:

• .com
• .net
• .org

The remaining 20% were .us, as we built out the sites
(true mini sites with most being less than 3 pages total)
I set up and tracked 85 of the sites in Google for the
target keyword phase.

45% of the domains ranked in the top twenty of Google.
These were all .com, .net or .org

None of the .us domains (again about 20) ranked in the top
fourty of Google for the targeted keyword phrase.

Domains matter for ranking.

However, it is easy to get any of the major domains to rank
well over time. Right now .org domains rank incredibly well
and I would focus on those.

Search for: mermaid costume
or
fairy costume

And you will find both of my sites in the top 15 of Google
(.org)

Hope this info helps ....

Best,

[Wiggy0618]

Call me crazy - and I'm not as experienced as the other folks posting here - but I know I wouldn't want it if I couldn't get a .com.

Regardless of everything discussed here, I always thought of it like this - if somebody else had the actual domain name I wanted, why risk people going to the their site instead of you? Esp if they're selling the same sort of thing you are?

It would be the same (I always thought) if you added something 'extra' to the url itself. For example, a buddy of mine started up a membership site. He wanted a two-word domain (e.g. - word1word2.com), but it was already taken. Instead of getting a .net or .biz or whatever, he decided to change what domain name he wanted. But instead of changing it to something easy to remember, he kept it the same, but added a dash in the middle (e.g. - word1-word2.com).

I didn't understand, b/c just as many people (I'd think) would goof up not having the dash as would using a different extension. Heck, he's my buddy and I've gone to the wrong site before b/c *I* forgot about the dash in the url.

Never made any sense to me.

Go with something that's gonna mean people will remember you easiest and won't make it easy for them to find somebody else.

[JohnMcCabe]

Wiggy, you aren't crazy. If your traffic depends on people typing your name into the browser bar, your take makes perfect sense.

If your traffic depends on people clicking active links - sig files, article resource boxes, ads, search results, etc. - the format of the domain name isn't all that important.

In any case, it's less important than having the keywords somewhere in the domain name as far as SEO practice goes.

Originally Posted by Wiggy0618

Call me crazy - and I'm not as experienced as the other folks posting here - but I know I wouldn't want it if I couldn't get a .com.

Regardless of everything discussed here, I always thought of it like this - if somebody else had the actual domain name I wanted, why risk people going to the their site instead of you? Esp if they're selling the same sort of thing you are?

It would be the same (I always thought) if you added something 'extra' to the url itself. For example, a buddy of mine started up a membership site. He wanted a two-word domain (e.g. - word1word2.com), but it was already taken. Instead of getting a .net or .biz or whatever, he decided to change what domain name he wanted. But instead of changing it to something easy to remember, he kept it the same, but added a dash in the middle (e.g. - word1-word2.com).

I didn't understand, b/c just as many people (I'd think) would goof up not having the dash as would using a different extension. Heck, he's my buddy and I've gone to the wrong site before b/c *I* forgot about the dash in the url.

Never made any sense to me.

Go with something that's gonna mean people will remember you easiest and won't make it easy for them to find somebody else.

[MikeZewski]

Originally Posted by matrix1989

so im looking at buying a domain and i can get some extensions much cheaper than others. does it matter which one you get? (.com,.biz,.net etc)

does this affect SEO?

thanks in advance, Matrix

IMO .com would be the first choice. For one,when someone searches a URL they usually put in domainname.com instead of .net etc. And if you sell the domain or site in the future .com will be worth more money.

[1040]

I totally agree, .com is king then .net and then.org seem to work best for me. It really does'nt matter thought if your page is not well optimized and your content is not build around targeted keywords...

[actionplanbiz]

I think it Matters.

The offline population is use to .com and will most of the time type something like

craigslist.com rather than .org

[howinfo]

Whatever extension you have on your domain you still need to work on SEO like everybody else. Do not think that you will get a special treatment because you have .com extension. Choosing the domain by its extension is really a wrong way to go about it. Lot of people have chosen a really bad domain name just to be able to have .com at the end. It all depends on your web project and .com is often times least suitable. We started a little site with info extension and it has grown so fast in terms of visitors that we never expected. Any of our .com sites has ever been so popular. I can strongly recommend .info extension if that is suitable to your web project. If .com is available as well just get it for safe keeping.

INFO is the first truly global domain.
Intuitive, easy to use, and universally recognized, .INFO is your opportunity to reach a worldwide audience with information about you, your ideas, or your business.
One of the largest “generic” Top-Level Domain on the Internet .
Especially popular in Europe and North America and growing in Asia.
High awareness – .INFO has been online since 2001 and is a trusted source of information.
Over half of Internet users claim they are likely to visit one of the fastest growing domains.
INFO is a standard term in most countries.
INFO is an intuitive place to find YOUR information.
Over 300,000,000 pages of .INFO content stored in Google.
More pages than over 260 other domains.
.INFO names are perfect for search engine submittal.

[Glassjaw009]

I used to ask myself this question all the time, and odds are you're getting various responses and preferences based on other people's experiences. For me, .com is always the best way to go. Even if we say that all extensions are on a level playing field as far as SEO, with .com you get

1) professional look
2) easier to remember

(in my experience .com ranks the best too, but if you put that aside, you still get multiple benefits from a .com as opposed to a .info or something else)

[howinfo]

We where bit sceptical about info extension at first and when we did research about that we where getting very positive and negative opinions so we had to try it out ourselves.
Result has been more than positive. I think lot of people do not get desired results with info domain because they have no belief in it and they are not willing to work on it as hard than they would work on .com for example. If they would work on it as hard as they do on .com they would see very good results.

[JBorhez]

I've gotten better results with 'keyword'+.net than with something like 'the +keyword'+.com

I've had these same questions! I'm still fairly new and experimenting with all of this stuff.

[LetsGoViral]

It matters a lot. Usually I got for .com domains but .net and .org are good as well depending on what your sites content is. .info domains sound cheap and are cheap. I don't really recommend them except for some small experiments.

[howinfo]

If you have informational website that provides information then .info would be the perfect extension. Yes, info domains are cheap but that does not mean you can not have very good results with it. If you think that the domain extension price will help you with SEO than why not to buy .vc or .hn that will cost around $ 100 for a year.

[rawhide]

I feel like the .com is usually the best for me, i have better luck with .com's than net or info.

[howinfo]

Yes, luck is a good thing to have, but if there is no luck than you just have to work hard.

[G Allan Roberts]

It depends on what you are going to use it for.

In most cases you want to get .com or .mobi because they have the most resell value.

But if you are looking for throw away domains for SEO or some affiliate promotion then go with the other extensions

[raj5]

.com is alot more popular that the rest

[misterkailo]

Everyone who said .com .org .net matters in terms of SEO is partially wrong.

Google just keeps your site sandboxed longer than .com .org, or .net. In the end, your .info site can outrank any other domains if you have higher pagerank, fully optimized title, keywords in domain, and lots of proper anchor text links pointing to your site.

Once you are out of the sandbox, the level playing field is even.

[Sparhawke]

Originally Posted by Wiggy0618

Call me crazy - and I'm not as experienced as the other folks posting here - but I know I wouldn't want it if I couldn't get a .com.

Regardless of everything discussed here, I always thought of it like this - if somebody else had the actual domain name I wanted, why risk people going to the their site instead of you? Esp if they're selling the same sort of thing you are?

It would be the same (I always thought) if you added something 'extra' to the url itself. For example, a buddy of mine started up a membership site. He wanted a two-word domain (e.g. - word1word2.com), but it was already taken. Instead of getting a .net or .biz or whatever, he decided to change what domain name he wanted. But instead of changing it to something easy to remember, he kept it the same, but added a dash in the middle (e.g. - word1-word2.com).

I didn't understand, b/c just as many people (I'd think) would goof up not having the dash as would using a different extension. Heck, he's my buddy and I've gone to the wrong site before b/c *I* forgot about the dash in the url.

Never made any sense to me.

Go with something that's gonna mean people will remember you easiest and won't make it easy for them to find somebody else.

I agree with this, I "reviewed" a site earlier tonight that a guy had made and was completely confused as to why he would make a co.uk with the EXACT same title keywords when the .com was gone and in the exact same field of knowledge, makes absolutely no sense to me because even if people are looking specifically for him they will simply go to the competition.

No wonder he only has 8 members and one post to show for a month.

[Arbitrager]

It doesnt matter for SEO. Its just people were used to with the .com since hundreds of million have been spent to promote the .com. If you want to do some branding, I would suggest to use Dot Com.

[erwindegrave]

Originally Posted by Adam Carn

.com is the most popular, and we're all mentally programmed to put .com at the end of everything these days. It's the easiest to remember, most recognised extension. For SEO it doesn't matter what extension you have.

Hope that helps.

Thanks,
Adam

True Adam, it is so far the most popular and will always be. And yes we are all mentally program to use it compared to other domain extensions :-)

All I can say is that whenever you buy, always a ".com" because it already is established as a brand. :-)

[Kevin Alexander]

.com's are so widely known.... .net's are second... depending on the niche, keywords you want ranked for, etc. you can use .info's and ,biz's with great success

[precious007]

I've used to buy .info for two years since I didn't depend much on SEO/search engine traffic. Was using the domain for my landing pages.

If you're looking to develop a brand then buy a .com.

Al.