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SEO: Google Preferred .org over .net domain (Actual Test)

by sandrax
17 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi everyone,

The other day I did a little test for a key question you see a lot coming by on the forum. .Org versus .Net??

A few days ago I bought two exact keyword domain names, exactly the same and at the exact same time with a purchase through GoDaddy, just with the two different extensions.

I put up an exact SEO optimized copy on both websites, identical. As soon as google crawled both it has put the .org domain in the #2 spot for that keyword and the .net version is nowhere to be found.

Sorry, but I will not mention the website domains, it's irrelevant anyway, I just wanted to share my experience with this and hope this might help someone.

Have a great day,
Marc
#actual #domain #google #net #org #preferred #seo
  • Profile picture of the author markowe
    Interesting experiment! Who knows what goes on behind the scenes - maybe if someone else tried it the .net would get priority! Maybe they shuffle those ranking factors around so that no single TLD really has priority. Though, if the .net has bombed, that sounds like Google has picked the .org as the original source of the content? Wonder what it would base that decision on...
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  • Profile picture of the author sandrax
    Hi Markowe, I know.

    You know, I'm not saying that I discovered the Google ranking secret here, we'll never know, lol. It just worked out for this specific test, but it surely was interesting. .Net is nowhere to be found to ??

    Both had 2 backlinks from the same page, just to tell Google, hey look at us, who do you wanna rank better .
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  • Profile picture of the author John Williamson
    Weird, I've had tests that have shown the opposite.
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    • Profile picture of the author faceblogger
      Originally Posted by John Williamson View Post

      Weird, I've had tests that have shown the opposite.
      This.

      My tests too have had shown the opposite
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    • Profile picture of the author faceblogger
      Originally Posted by John Williamson View Post

      Weird, I've had tests that have shown the opposite.
      same here!
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      • Profile picture of the author Cosmit
        agree with anyone who said second site got considered duplicate, cuz that's the case. you can't have 2 identical sites rank the same.. it's a matter of which one got crawled & indexed first, second one is trash. i doubt the extension matters, and if it does, it's less than 0.5% which isn't even worth mentioning imo.

        but regardless, thanks for the share
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  • Profile picture of the author BenJackson
    It's a cool experiment, but how can you draw a sure conclusion from it? How can you possibly isolate the variables? I believe that Google has over 200 variables for their ranking algorithm, to conduct a true scientific test you would have to list these variables and somehow measure each of their effects on the sites to see what caused the difference in rankings.

    As markowe mentioned, the difference could simply be in which one Google chose as the original source.
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    • Profile picture of the author John Williamson
      Originally Posted by BenJackson View Post

      It's a cool experiment, but how can you draw a sure conclusion from it? How can you possibly isolate the variables? I believe that Google has over 200 variables for their ranking algorithm, to conduct a true scientific test you would have to list these variables and somehow measure each of their effects on the sites to see what caused the difference in rankings.

      As markowe mentioned, the difference could simply be in which one Google chose as the original source.
      Excellent observations.
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      • Profile picture of the author paulgl
        Hardly a "test."

        Was a dot com in the #1 slot? If so, then we can conclude that
        a dot com is favored by google over a dot org?

        Hardly.

        Why didn't you get a dot info and a dot biz and a dot tv?

        Funny thing, some people would claim one site was penalized due to
        duplicate content...

        Paul
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        • Profile picture of the author thecableguy

          Funny thing, some people would claim one site was penalized due to
          duplicate content...
          Yeah there might be something to that. I did the same with a com, net, org and info a few years back, exact same content and no backlinks on any of them. One of them the .com hit the first page and the others I stopped looking after about a half dozen pages. I guess the first to get indexed showed in the SERPs and the others went into the supplemental index. Google doesn't like duplicate pages, but they all hit Yahoo's first page (kinda embarrasing, it was the same domain/content just a different extension).
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  • Profile picture of the author greatseoservice
    Yes indeed, read it a lot of times: com, .org, .net in that order. Never a .info
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  • Profile picture of the author BradBergeron
    I'd do a few more tests before I come to this conclusion if I were you.
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  • Profile picture of the author sandrax
    Thanks Warriors for sharing all your experience in this thread.

    Update on this .org vs .net, after a while totally neglecting the two sites, the .net ranked higher then the .org?? Go figure. No additional back linking or anything else was done.

    I guess we'll never know how the Google Algorithm works .
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  • Profile picture of the author Fernando Veloso
    Well, for what is worth, a test is a test, and OP did well to "test it". But I wouldn't jump into any conclusions since is virtually impossible to do a proper test with/and in Google.
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