Domain suffix and affect on SE's

A quick question for SEO's experts on the list.

Is there any conclusive evidence of domain suffix affecting SE inclusion/ranking?

The .com for a keyword loaded domain I want is unavailable, if I used .info would I likely be penalised in anyway or would it be treated in the same way as any other domain?

Thanks,

Neil Durrant

One of the problem's with .info is that you can't get included in a regional directory in DMOZ. I.e. if you run a UK site that has a .info suffix then DMOZ won't list it in any of the UK directories. I know this may sound fairly obvious but it's surprising the number of people who aren't aware of this.

Kieron

I thought it might be a problem with one .info domain I have, but it's achieved better rankings than I expected in Google. Not done so well in Inktomi, but there's nothing to suggest it's being penalised for not being a .com.

I think not getting listed in DMOZ is just an opinion rather than a DMOZ policy. The whole idea of a human edited directory is that sites are reviewed by a human who can tell from the site content whether or not it is relevent.

I would think it would just have the same plus and minus points as any other domain.

just my 2p

Hi Kieron,

Is that right, that .info sites cannot be listed in the UK categories? I am a UK editor on DMOZ and have never seen that written anywhere. I must admit I haven't added a .info yet but I will be soon (as a client's site is about to be launched with a .info and is suited to my category) so it will be interesting to see if this is the case.

I have a feeling bertm is right. It's about opinion rather than policy. I believe the .info suffix makes alot of sense to a truely information-based site - although I feel it has no real commercial value because of the sheer awareness of DOT COM!

Cheers,

Hi Darren,

I think the problem with a .info is that it is obviously meant as a new GTLD and not a ccTLD. And I was always lead to believe that DMOZ only accepted domains ending in .uk for UK categories, although I must confess that I can't find this written anywhere either.

An example I can give on this relates to Google. I have a .info domain that is aimed at the UK market. I rank first in Google.com for my chosen keywords but I'm absolutely nowhere to be seen in Google.co.uk for the same keywords. To be honest I learnt a lesson from this, and that's if you're aiming for the UK market, go for a .co.uk domain first and a .com second.

I'm pretty much hold the same opinion that you do on .INFO's. They will take YEARS before they are as globally recognisable as .com's and that is if they ever do at all, which I very much doubt.

Kieron

I read somewhere that Google look at where the site is hosted, rather than the TLD when they include it in their regional searches. But I've not noticed any difference. One of my sites is located in the US, and it still gets a good position on Google UK - and it's a .net TLD.

I think JF's right there.

The DMOZ UK categorie have many, many .com's in, which aren't strictly UK based.

I believe Google have various different ways in deciding what's UK and what's not UK. For example, a search for 'Lowestoft' on both a standard web search on .com or .co.uk and a UK search on google.co.uk all throw up the same top 5. Positions 2 and 4 are .com's and 3 is a .net

I believe it, as JF said, is to do with the physical/geographic location of the server and also the references and other elements of google's algorithm which make something 'UK' or not. i.e. if anchor text contains 'UK' then it is more likely to be a UK resource than not.

Cheers,

JF, Darren,

I hear what you are saying but I can definately tell you that the keywords for my site throw up a different top 5 on Google.com than they do on Google.co.uk. To complicate matters more, my .info domain is hosted in the UK but gets better results on Google.com!!

Frustrating to say the least! But I guess if we all knew how Google works we'd be .com millionaires by now wouldn't we :-)

Kieron

Absolutely Kieron!

I've spent the majority of the past couple of weeks researching/learning further about search engines, etc and still am none-the-wiser about google!

Cheers,