Do Domain Extensions such as .com or .net affect SEO value?

[applesofgold]

In the beginning of SEO days, it was going around that .com is the best for SEO and that .net is not as good. Is there any truth to this, and what about .org or .edu?

I always hear that .edu sites have high PR.

Is there any rhyme or reason to this, or all they all equal?

Thank you,

Afshin

Christian-Way.com

[lonniea]

Hi Afshin,

Having being online for such a long experience, here is my conclusion to your question.

Technically there is absolutely no difference which domain extension you wanna use for SEO, however... there is another type of SEO which is associated through representation.

Whenever I visit a friend that merely surfs the net for kicks, they would always add www at the beginning of the domain to find the site through their Internet Browser. You will seldom find someone who will use http:// or simply type in the domain.

This is also true when it comes to .com or .net. -  *.com associates commercial content and *.net is more or less regarded as a backup to *.com. Therefore when somebody seeks a site, the *.com is always primary.

On another hand we have .org or .edu - .org is automatically regarded as **charitabl*e** organization in our minds while *.edu is regarded as educational like a college, school or university.

And... on another note *.com and *.org were the first domain name extensions on the Internet.  I would probably say these domains would have more links pointing to each other than any other domain extension. So if you want to build a web site portal or a new search engine the *.com would be the most likely candidate due the vast number of links or sites on the Internet.

My conclusion:

There is no difference technically for SEO optmization on a given web site with any domain name extentions but nowadays new *.com extensions are registered on v6 IP structures. However *.com has more pull socially and *.org has more pull in a chartible way. Now... if I was looking for a Christian site and if i saw Christian-Way.com and Christian-Way.org, I would most likely visit the *.org site first.

This is my take anyway. Hope that helped.

Cheers

[Francisco_Meza]

"There is no difference technically for SEO optmization on a given web site with any domain name extentions"

Sorry Lonnie, I have to disagree with you a little:

I have to put in this article that Rand wrote a while back:

http://www.seomoz.org/blog/google-vs-bing-correlation-analysis-of-ranking-elements

The only TLDs I would buy are .com, .net, .org. Forget all the rest because I never see them in google anyway (info, tv, biz, whatever)

[icecarats]

To add on what Lonnie said, the way things are now is that the human perception of domain names is almost more important than Google's. However, I'm assuming that you're referring to backlinks, and not actual domain names (since you already have a highly ranked .com domain name). In the past .edu links were considered more important, but personally I believe that Google is no longer weighing them heavier due to abuse of .edu links. I think that (theoretically) Google is more satisfied with the Panda update and how that interprets textual content for domain strength as opposed to what three letter suffix the domain ends in.

Apologies if I misunderstood your question, and you were considering going with a .org/.net/etc domain for your site.

[AlanMosley]

First I would say that I dont like the www on domains names and i belueve uit will fade away sometime as it is not nessasary and will make urls look old fashioned. Its a good point that some may type in the www, but i believe that is a small amount fo people.

Matt Cutts has mentioend cheap domain TLDS are associalited with spam in a few videos, while this does not mean they rank them lower, i would not risk it.

The best reason not to use them is conversion, they look cheap and spammy, i would always prefere a .com, .net or .org

[lonniea]

Yes Francisco, i do see what you mean. you know something though? if i were really digging deep and needed a short domain niche and decided to corner the internet with it... well... gee. i think it would really matter more on just how large a pocket i want or just how polished i want to be.

but frankly i can seo and rank deep pages on any site with very long url strings, so why bother?

personally some SEO stuff is way over the top and when you can earn money with millions of niches on even long tailed keyword phrases on any given web site, well... i'm just happy i need not be so damn serious about it.

i can whip up another blog in 8 hours, get indexed and drive traffic and ranked with 7 days time, therefore going over the top and analyzing every single nock and granny is simply not neccessary for the average marketer. or even the serious marketer.

it solely depends on how much competition there is on the 1st search result page before i'll ever make finer adjustments.but it doesn't mean to say that i will stop activity. i will however make sure i remain stable. but to hit number 1 spot is not my concern. being anywhere on the first 5 search pages is plenty good for me.

i guess im not greedy lol

thats my take anyway

PS: I would most certainly take on *.com, *.org, *edu or *.net before any other extention as well

[e2iq-8Tig9NH7_Uf]

Really didn't respond to the actual question though.  Instead you just bragged about how you can get ranked quickly, and how it doesn't matter to you much, blah blah.  You should try focusing on the inquiry itself and not describing what you do and how clever that is...