The importance of .com .net or .org in regards to seo.

14 years ago

No, it does not matter for SEO purposes.

I wrote this article about it on my blog: Earn Online Cash with .Info Domains

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Scott Rankin

14 years ago

I've actually tested this and found .com ranks better then .org or .net

This is keeping all things equal.

Obviously if one website is an authority with thousands of quality links and it's a org, it's still going to do better then the .com with 0 links - that's a given.

But all things equal, I would rather have a .com - remember, it was called the .com bust, not the .net or .org bust. The average consumer thinks the internet is all about .com

Having worked on SEO for hundreds of domain names, when other variables are kept equal, the .com does better. Just my experience. Test it out for yourself and see what happens. Good luck.

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searchnology

14 years ago

Well, the problem is that you can't keep "all things equal" for a true test of this so everyone's experiences are unique.

It's virtually impossible given you can't get exact duplicate sites indexed the same way, the search engine spiders won't crawl the backlinks for each site the exact same way, you can't control if someone backlinks only one of the sites on their own volition and if you compare different niches for each domain type that isn't an apples to apples comparison.

Best to perhaps choose a domain based on user expectations. Afterall, human interactions is where you make the money, not just by ranking.

.com is usually seen as the more prestigious version. .net almost always prompts the question "Oh, you couldn't get the .com huh?" For an actual cause or organization site use .org. You would be hard pressed to get me trust any .info site, but that is just me.

Originally Posted by Scott Rankin

I've actually tested this and found .com ranks better then .org or .net

This is keeping all things equal.

Obviously if one website is an authority with thousands of quality links and it's a org, it's still going to do better then the .com with 0 links - that's a given.

But all things equal, I would rather have a .com - remember, it was called the .com bust, not the .net or .org bust. The average consumer thinks the internet is all about .com

Having worked on SEO for hundreds of domain names, when other variables are kept equal, the .com does better. Just my experience. Test it out for yourself and see what happens. Good luck.

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Dave_J

14 years ago

Originally Posted by searchnology

Well, the problem is that you can't keep "all things equal" for a true test of this so everyone's experiences are unique.

It's virtually impossible given you can't get exact duplicate sites indexed the same way, the search engine spiders won't crawl the backlinks for each site the exact same way, you can't control if someone backlinks only one of the sites on their own volition and if you compare different niches for each domain type that isn't an apples to apples comparison.

Best to perhaps choose a domain based on user expectations. .com is seen as the more prestigious version. .net almost always prompts the question "Oh, you couldn't get the .com huh?" For an actual cause or organization site use .org.

i'd agree with you here - your never going to get an exact comparisson - but you can get pretty close and i would always go .com .net then .org
Just my personal preference rather than cold hard facts though.

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ameto 14 years ago

I also don't think that it really matter for SEO...however one should prefer .com as this is obvious website extension..If your site is country specific,one can use county specific extension. For example (.au- Australia, .in- india)
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- paulgl 14 years ago
  
  Why is it so hard for this myth to die?
  
  SEO is what you do to a website, not picking a domain.
  
  Google could care less.
  
  If it were only that easy.
  
  Here's an idea. Why don't we just tell all the domain sellers
  to just forget about all the rest. Why bother, right? So the
  next time you buy a domain, buy one from one who only sells
  dot coms. That way, you know they are a good company!
  
  Feelings and perceptions are not SEO.
  
  Paul
  
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  24ondemand 14 years ago
  
  Agreed with " paulgl" You just concentrate on your SEO strategy not .com,.org or .net
  
  As much as your SEO efforts good your site got traffic.
  
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Emily Johnson 14 years ago

Great info. All very true.
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TrafficMystic

14 years ago

I also tested this.. and as scott says... .Com then .Net then .Org seemed to be the preference.

I did also test .info and .co.uk. .Info was a waste of time and looked as though it was being classed as a very low value domain (probably due to all the spammers buying them up at cheap prices).. The .co.uk worked well though for the UK traffic.

I bought 5 domains (.com / .net / .org / .info anfd co.uk) containing the same keyword text in each when I tested this with the keywords being in a small niche...

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Dezire

14 years ago

Thanks Guys, that clears things up.

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thecableguy 14 years ago

I haven't done any testing, but after optimizing hundreds of domains I have to agree with the .com first, then .org or .net, although people keep saying it doesn't matter it seems that other TLD's are harder to rank (on Google at least). I register .info domains when I'm doing a redirect (article resource box, PPC) and don't bother optimizing them as well as the com, net and org. The info domains still receive organic traffic, but not as much.
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- AllThingsArePossible 14 years ago
  
  dot org's, net's, com's are equal in seo from my experience...
  
  I've tested many times and dot org's do just as well in rankings
  
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EyeInTriangle

14 years ago

I really have experienced no difference in these domains, but .info seems a bit fluffy and doesn't carry as much weight in the search engines. But, this is only my experience.

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Peter Gregory

14 years ago

I agree with paulgl. In my testing I have always found them to all be equal in seo terms .com is really only important for branding NOT for seo. .com is known by the average consumer thus makes a better branding opportunity, but the se algos could care less about your brand.

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big_t

14 years ago

The only way to truly test this is by building two completely identical sites in every way except for the domain extension.

I'd be curious to see what happens.

I hear people swear by both sides of the argument so I'm not sure what to think.
But either way, I prefer to go for .com or .net. Just to be on the safe side.

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tjcocker

14 years ago

Mumble, .info, .com, blah, grunt...

I'm so tired of this discussion. Basically, if the .com, .net, and .org are taken, but not ranking because they are doing AdWords or they're just stupid, then you can dominate with the .info. Every single time is different though, so no comparisons are valid.

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seobro

14 years ago

Basically, you want it to be .com, because a lot of .info domains are used for spam.
Google thinks
.edu = gold
.com = silver
.info = bronze

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bgmacaw 14 years ago

Originally Posted by seobro

Basically, you want it to be .com, because a lot of .info domains are used for spam.
Google thinks
.edu = gold
.com = silver
.info = bronze

BS. Google doesn't care. The whole ".edu is better" thing is cargo cult SEO.

And, a lot more .com domains are used for spam than there are .info domains altogether.
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Dexter007

14 years ago

According to me, .com is obviously the most obvious choice followed by a .org and a .net. The reason for this is .com looks like a 'real' site whereas other sites look somewhat alienated. Google does seem to love .com more than others. But again, every coin has its two sides ! As someone recently quoted...

BS. Google doesn't care. The whole ".edu is better" thing is cargo cult SEO.

And, a lot more .com domains are used for spam than there are .info domains altogether.

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Bruce Hearder

14 years ago

The second poster (bgmacaw) was spot on!

It makes ABSOLUTELY no difference at all.

It all depends on your offsite factors. Onsite factors really only come into play when you have the same offsite factors as your competitors.

Just get linking.. and stop stressing about .com vs .org vs .info etc

Bruce

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Michi Kono

14 years ago

I agree with most of you. I always stick with .com or .net... .org is rather rare foe me to use unless I really want a specific domain name which has already been taken for .com and .net.. Having said that I did test with .info only once during the Beijing Olympics (I made a simple blog related to the Olympic Games) and it climbed up to top 5 in Gooogle for "beijing olympic games 2008" and stayed there for a couple of months. (It's a pretty old site so it's no longer there...) But I don't know what would happen if I do the same now...

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ramprof

14 years ago

See SEO Empire Blog Archive SEO Test 11: .com vs .org vs .net vs .info (this experiment is in line with some that I am running in my lab and the results seem to be the same for others running similar experiments). Of course, your domain name is only a very small part of SEO. Any site will rank well if you so some basic on-site SEO (title tag, content, etc.) and then get lots of backlinks.

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The importance of .com .net or .org in regards to seo.

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