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

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. :-)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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?!? :confused:

Links, especially authority links, are what matters.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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