Does TLD extension ACTUALLY make a difference?

http://www.warriorforum.com/adsense-...ml#post4242583

It's an interesting thread which John has linked for your perusal but it does seem that a lot of people are spilt down the middle on whether some tlds provide greater value than others.

It is very difficult to accurately split test the SEO performance of two tlds under the same conditions to see which comes out on top. However, I am of the school of thought that if you provide strong content which visitors wish to proactively share and link to then the choice of tld becomes less of a relevant factor... within reason

The caveats to that statement are the following (in my personal opinion):
1. .COM domains offer a greater CTR within search results -
I have tested both a .com, .co.uk, and a .info within an AdWords campaign for a client under controlled conditions (.i.e. same ad text apart from display url, same keyword set, as close to an identical average keyword position as I could achieve). This exercise was performed in Google UK so I did think that the .co.uk would win out but I was surprised when I saw that the .com had a much higher CTR than the .info and marginally higher than the .co.uk. If this is something which would be applied to organic results then I feel that CTR as a ranking factor (whether you feel it is now or will be in the near future... I do to the former) then the .com will offer you a competitive edge.

2. Tlds with the potential to be used to spam or scam the search results do get penalised by Google
When Google dumped 11 million .co.cc sites from their results it highlighted the absolute power they have and their preferential (or non-preferential in the case) treatment they have to certain domain extensions.
.Info is become more and more discounted by the registry with their regular offers which they pass onto registrars and more often than not customers can purchase .info domains for about 10% of the price of a .COM. If this low retail price continues then scammers will become a lot more focused on using .info domains which could ultimately devalue these extensions in the eyes of Google.
The registry article has further information about the .co.cc situation
theregister.co.uk/2011/07/06/google_cans_11m_dot_co_dot_cc_sites/

Bit of food for thought or discussion. Always interested in hearing other peoples opinions and experiences

If you think about the TLD from a customer perspective, there are still people out there who are more familiar with .com, and have seen enough .org and .net TLDs to be reasonably comfortable with them.

So the more "user-comfortable" the TLD is, the more likely the user will feel good about clicking on the results. Kind of a touchy-feely thing, but it does happen with less sophisticated users in some niches.

Also, there is the issue of memory. When you aren't using the .com version, people have a little harder time remembering your domain. Most people just remember the actual domain wording, but not the .com part. So they'll look at the .com, and if they are a little smart maybe the .org or .net, but they generally don't think past that when trying to type in your domain from memory.

You may lose some of these as they don't want to do a Google search to find the actual URL.

For example, I sometimes order Round Table pizza. But I can never remember the domain name and I'm always typing in roundtable[dot]com which doesn't go to them. Just keep in mind that your users may or may not remember your exact second-level domain, so don't make their job a lot harder by putting in a confusing TLD too.

Of course, this viewpoint is more important from an offline business viewpoint, I think. If the most common way for people to find you is through the search results in the first place, then the comfort issue is far more important than the memory issue.