.info Domain With 246,000 Unique Exact Phrase Searches

A .info has as much chance as ranking well as a .com if it has quality backlinks and quality content. In the past few days I've noticed .info's on the first page when I've been searching for random things.

Sounds like you've picked up a winner.

Thank. I asure hope so. I stumbled on it accidentally

Buddy, you've got yourself a treat! Good for you...

You will hear many people 'teaching' others that .info domains are the worst of the worst, etc... That you should focus only on .com domains and so on...

This is simply untrue!

All tld's are equal for SE's. Websites (actually pages) are ranking - none will rank better than another, based on the tld's.

There is, indeed, a slight difference, regarding traffic.

There are still visitors who will try to type in a website name directly on the address bar and they may add the .com inadvertently at the end, even if they have in mind your .info domain.

But just the same, there are many others who, knowing the website already, instead of typing it into the address bar, they will use the search box.

IF you manage to rank well and say... outrank the same domain name but .com tld... you may get more from those search box typists than you would lose from the address bar ones.

Others will tell you that IF you will try to sell it, then you will get less money for it.
Although based on a crazy assumption, this may be indeed true, though, unless you will try to sell it after already building good traffic, rankings and make money (with proofs) with it.
This will happen because of those many other people who were 'told' that .info's are less valuable than .com's. This is hard to change.
Especially if you're trying to sell them a .info domain and try to teach them the idea of 'same value' at the same time... tricky, huh?

I'd say... the reverse is very valuable. If you want to BUY a .info domain, he, he... pretend you think it is just not as valuable as a .com might have been... :p Maybe you'll get yourself another treat?

Steve Lorenzo SEOVirtuoso

As stated by others, .info or any other TLD's don't make any difference from SEO point of view.

I have few websites with .info which are in top 10 for very competitive keywords with PR 3+ so it is just a myth that .info doesn't rank well.

Just do a good onpage optimization, backlinking and you are on your way to the top.

OK I will once again chime in here with the truth.

Sorry, but the truth is that Google at least has always factored TLD into their algorithm. They favor .edu and .gov domains for example. Last year they dumped ALL .info domains from the index for a day or two (don't remember how long but you can look it up).

In addition, Matt Cutts has alluded (not flat out said) to the fact that Google considers some TLDs spammy (see Google Temporarily Purges .info Domain Names | SEO Book.com and Matt Cutts Does Domain Roundtable | SEO.com).

BTW - it would be nice when people post "facts" or the "truth" that they back it up with some evidence.

You might get a .info to rank well. Heck I can get the most spammy Black Hat site to rank well for a time. But given that so many people use .info domains for spam and black hat sites, Google can decide tomorrow to either ban them completely or severely penalize them (probably more likely). So, if you are planning to build a business for the long term you might want to think twice.

Google is in the business of providing relevant search results. If they dumped all the .infos they could no longer provide the best search results, and so they would ALL come back. Pretty stupid to ignore them, as they are just as likely to be crap sites as much as .coms or any other TLD.

A quote from the above link: "He said that TLD doesn't matter-that's the way Larry and Sergey originally designed the Google algorithm. The algorithm doesn't care where the page is located, it's all about pagerank (LINKS) of the particular page. At the end of answering this question he did admit that they might have started to look at particularly cheap (and spammy) TLDs differently than other TLDs-or they might start considering TLD in their algorithm if they're not already doing so."

So they might start doing something, maybe... I've noticed .infos seem take a few weeks longer and a few more links to rank than other TLDs, but that's it. I've tested this on about 25 .infos compared to 15 other TLDs. Not scientific, but neither is anything Matt Cutts says. That doesn't mean I'm going to ignore a great exact match if it's a .info.

In less than 6 months several of my .infos were given PR3s and PR4s and below. I got one PR4 for the other TLDs and the rest went up to PR1. Again, this is just my unscientific findings, but I learn from personal experience, not something someone else says is truth.

Yeah they are restricted. That has nothing to do with Google favouring certain TLD extensions which you think is "the truth".

Here is a quote from one of your sources for your own reference:

No where does he say they favour .edu or .gov over others. Matt Cutts also never stated that .info are penalised. They said that they might.

Your SEOBook reference is one persons account. In the comments you have people saying they were affected, others saying they weren't. Others saying their .com was also dropped at the same time and reappeard. Hardly fact.

What would you say a .info domain with 246,000 exact phrase monthly searches is worth?

Just because you have the keyword in the domain doesn't mean you will rank for it. In my opionion having a domain name that will make searchers more likely to click my result is much more important than having the keyword in it. If I can do both then great. If not I just create a sub folder or page name that contain the keyword.

I'd say you found yourself a winner! I'd still rather have the .com version of it but nothing wrong with a .info as long as you develop it properly.

It is great to see so much support here for the (.info) TLD.

I have had no issues with mine hitting the first page and gathering PageRank.

Mejohn: If you need an example of a (.info) ranking well in a competitive field, then head over to Google.com and type "Pagerank" in there and you'll see a second spot listing (actually opens into third as well); It's even beating an official Google page that sits just below it. Best of luck with your site!

The TLD has a lot to do with what country the domain is shown to. If you use a .co.uk domain you can get to #1 for a keyword with just 1 or 2 links when there are american sites with hundreds of links.

.info isn't specified to any particular country by default so this will provide a certain unique behaviour, unless you go into google webmaster tools and set the country you wish to display to.

Good thing about google is there are lots of sites with #1 ranking for same keyword, just different factors come into play.

So far, I have found it a bit more difficult to rank than .com, .org, and .net domains I have managed.