Do Domain Name Extensions Matter for SEO?
SEO March 31st, 2007I was doing a bit of brainstorming for a name, and domain name for a site I have been working on and was having trouble finding a suitable domain name. I was dead set on registering a .com domain name but there simply is nothing out there that I like. Of the 40 - 50 names that I tried, all of them were registered!
So, do domain name extensions matter for search engine optimization? Heres a summary of my findings in case any of you have asked the same question:
A Case Study Close to Home
I started by looking at my car forums since it is on a .ca domain. Beyond is on the front page when you search for “car forums”, ranked in 9th place. Most of the sites that rank above Beyond have the word “car” or “forums” and sometimes both in their domain names so naturally they’re going to get a bit of a boost. I’ll have to admit, my car forums could get some help from an SEO professional for certain search terms such as “car forums”. I certainly don’t expect it to be ranked #1 for that search term as I have not done much more than include that term several times on the forum pages. However, when we take a look at the SERPs on google.ca the picture changes a bit. Searching for “car forums” results in my site being ranked #1. There is definitely some bias when it comes to country coded top level domain names but its not clear if the .ca is getting a boost on google.ca, or if the .ca domain is being penalized on google.com.
Looking Further
A thread on the SitePoint forums discusses several myths related to domain name extensions:
This is another common myth that is untrue. The only time a domain extension can affect your ranking is if the search is based by country. The country-specific TLDs (e.g. .co.uk) will have priority over non-country specific TLDs (e.g. .com or .net).
One observation many make is that .coms tend to rank higher then other domain extensions. They assume it is because .coms are given preferential treatment. This is a poor assumption. .coms seem to rank higher then other extensions because they are by for more popular then any other domain extension (there are more .coms than .net, .org, .biz, .edu, .gov, and .info combined) so they naturally have a greater chance of ranking higher vs other domain extensions through sheer quantity alone. .coms also tend to be older sites so they have had a chance to establish themselves whereas newer domain extensions have not. They have also used this time to acquire more backlinks which is an important factor in search engine algorithms.
Final Thoughts
There are many other websites and blogs that basically echo the same “domain name extensions don’t matter for SEO” message as well as the “country specific domain extensions may boost rankings on country specific search results” message. This basically supports the findings that I see with my car forums results on google.com and google.ca. Now, it may seem that buying a .ca domain is now going to be an easy decision for me but you’d be wrong!
The general perception of the internet is that the only domains that exist are .com domains. A small sample of the general public understands there are .net and .org domains but only the the internet saavy crowd realizes that there domains that end in .biz, .mobi, .us, etc. The site that I plan on launching soon is aimed at the general non-techy public. By registering a .ca domain or any other non .com domain, I may be losing out on alot of traffic as people will type in the .com equivelent. Sure, I can build and brand my domain but my #1 strategy in growing this new site will be word of mouth, and that will suffer tremendously without a .com domain.
Back to brainstorming for a .com domain I guess…
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