Are TLD and numbers in subdomain ranking factors?

[3PointRoss]

Several years ago my firm migrated our domain from a very lengthy 3point7designs.com to 3.7designs.co (we couldn't get 7designs.com at the time) thinking this would be a clever way to brand the name 3.7 Designs.

Ever since that change we've had a dramatic reduction in search rankings which has lasted years.

https://monosnap.com/file/adJUdkX9YCXQaODcXype4qza70pMCE

You can see the drop in early 2011, we made the switch in February.

I've read some discussion about Google changing weights based on having numbers in the subdomain as it appears spammy. I've also herd speculation about .co vs .com.

Further evidence is being outranked by a competitor for a term we previously dominated despite having higher domain authority, inbound links, exact match keyword in our title and content.

We now own 37designs.com and 7designs.com and are contemplating a switch.

Any insight into these being ranking factors or is the site being penalized for other reasons?

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[3PointRoss]

Thanks Josh,

I appreciate the insight. I have researched other possibilities such as low quality links, high number of inbound links across the same domain, etc... but those competing for the same search phrases seem to be equal or worse offenders and are unaffected.

The primary difference apparent thus far is the less than SEO optimal domain usage.

But I'll keep digging and live with the .co for now as it sounds like the first domain change was one too many.

Cheers,
-Ross

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[Eric_Rohrback]

so the deal with subdomain vs domain is that you need to think of them as two separate sites; one is just living in the same database as the other. So when you moved the site over to a subdomain, it's possible you took a little hit but I don't think you would get penalized for having the main site live on the subdomain. It might come down to how you migrated and managed the redirects (did you map everything appropriately?), lost links because people were still referencing the old domain with the www subdomain, and a variety of other factors.

The .co ccTLD is actually for the country of Columbia, and isn't for "company" as some people may use it for. While there are a ton of spammy sites that use the .co because it's easier to snag an exact match domain, that doesn't necessarily mean you're being targeted for it. There are billions of websites out there. Having the .co and hosting in the US could send mixed messages, which may impact; however there's no real way to tell with any certainty.

Review your site migration, and make sure you have all the pages moved over correctly. Next I would check links. Reach out to people who are linking to you and ask them to update to the new domain. 301's lose a good percentage of equity passed, so it's better to get the full value with the correct link. Check local directories as well to make sure you cover all bases - those will need the URL updated. Finally, review your on-page optimization. Are you targeting the right keywords? If so, do you have the appropriate pages optimized and set up with good internal linking?

Check your traffic in analytics to look for specific dates it either spiked or dropped. That will also help you narrow down what you changed/what you need to change. Things like this are more detective work in the beginning to bring problem areas to light.

Start with that and let us know what you find.