Industry guru Dave Taylor offers free tech support on a wide variety of technical and business topics, including HTML, Apple iPhone, online advertising, Cascading Style Sheets, Web design, management, Unix, Linux, search engine optimization, online dating, Mac OS X, shell script programming and Microsoft Windows.

Does your top level domain affect your search engine rankings?

Hi Dave! I have a question regarding search engines and top level domains. Do you think that search engines look at this when they rank the site? Is it possible that .com has bigger value and caries more weight than, let's say, .net or .cc (my TLD)


Dave's Answer:

This is a darn interesting question, and one that clearly isn't cut and dry because there's a lot of debate in the SEO community on this topic.

The question is really: everything else being equal, would a ".com" be ranked more highly than a ".cn" or a ".fm" or similar?

My answer: yes.

Of course, since Google uses at least 180 different factors when it calculates Search Engine Results Placement (SERPs), the odds of having two pages with the exactly same score other than domain name seems exceptionally unlikely: if two pages were the same, then the newer file would suffer from a duplicate content penalty!

Nonetheless, I believe that there's also a psychological issue too, and know that I have a higher degree of confidence buying from a ".com" company than a ".cn" or ".cz" company, though I own ".com", ".net", ".org" and ".info" domains. No ".mil" yet. :-)

So if you have the choice between a splendid non-mainstream TLD domain name and a crummy, obscure name that's a ".com", I would suggest that you pick the former, not the latter. But then again, I believe that the vast majority of people come to a site because of the content, through search engines, so a human-readable domain might not be that important anyway.

I think you'd also find the following article worth reading:

  •   Does your domain name affect your search engine ranking?



Help others find this article at Del.icio.us, Digg, Netscape, Reddit, and Stumble Upon    

Subscribe!

Never miss another useful Q&A article again! Subscribe to AskDaveTaylor with Google Reader.

Comments

The way this is written it is almost as if your TLD is used as a tie-breaker. I am sure this is not the case, just the way you used your example to show the small significance of it in the big scheme of things.
So is it a sliding scale with .com on top and .(country code) at the bottom?

I do agree about the psychological issues. I dont think that applies to .net or .org as much as a .cz might make someone a little weary.

Posted by: RJ at February 1, 2006 9:12 AM

I agree. It definately helps the mind.

Posted by: JT at February 1, 2006 1:21 PM

I have something to say, now that you mention it, but ...
Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you for all your efforts on this Web site by buying you a cup of coffee!

I do have a comment, now that you mention it!











Remember personal info?


Please note that I will never send you any unsolicited commercial email. Ever.

While I'm at it, please note that by submitting a question or comment you're agreeing to my terms of service, which are: you relinquish any subsequent rights of ownership to your material by submitting it on this site.








Ask Dave Taylor: The iPhone App: Advertisement


Uniblue: Get A Free Virus Scan!

Follow me on Twitter @DaveTaylor

Search
Find just the answers you seek from among our 2300+ free tech support articles by using our Lijit search engine.


Help!





Subscribe to
Ask Dave Taylor!

Add to Google Reader
Add to My Yahoo!
Subscribe in NewsGator Online

RDF   XML

Free Updates!
Sign up and get free weekly updates and special offers on books, seminars, workshops and more.


Recent Entries
Book Links
© 2002 - 2010 by Dave Taylor. All Rights Reserved.

Note: This web site is for the purpose of disseminating information for educational purposes, free of charge, for the benefit of all visitors. We take great care to provide quality information. However, we do not guarantee, and accept no legal liability whatsoever arising from or connected to, the accuracy, reliability, currency or completeness of any material contained on this web site or on any linked site.

[whiteboard marker tray]
"Ask Dave Taylor®" is a registered trademark of Intuitive Systems, LLC.