Did .org vs. .com SEO importance recently changed?

[jimmyzig]

I have seen previous answers in the Forum about this subject but Google has seemed to have again changed the playing surface. Within the past 30 days, we have seen a huge spike in organic search returns seeming to favor .org as domain authorities.

Has anyone else noticed this shift and is it just coincidence or worth factoring in?

If it is a shift, will Google punish those that have .org but have used.com previously for switching the redirects to serve .org first?

Thanks, Jim

[TakeshiYoung]

Google treats the 3 main TLDs (.com, .org, .net) equally in terms of rankings. As long as you are using any of those, you should be fine (gTLDs like .co.uk can impact your search results, as well as spammy TLDs like .info).

You should not use redirects to switch from a .com domain to .org as 301 redirects result in a small PageRank loss.

[MattAntonino]

I've seen no evidence of a boost in .org or any other TLD vs another lately.  We have a couple thousand clients to compare and while new sites seem to be doing better than old but .org doesn't seem to be ahead of .com in any meaningful way.

I would definitely not change just for a .org but if it makes more sense, brand the correct way for your business.