information “People still like .com’s,” says Google’s John Mueller

[News]

Mueller is known in SEO circles as the “new Matt Cutts”. Matt Cutts used to be the head of Google’s Webspam team and would make videos answering questions from people about Google’s thoughts and practices regarding ranking websites. The videos were highly useful and would be something that many marketers and professional search engine optimizers would write about, comment on, and debate.

Mueller also leaves comments on Reddit once once in awhile. Extremely useful insight since it is coming directly from someone at Google with real authority. Compared to your cousin who thinks he knows about SEO. Of course… I recommend you take what Google says with a bit of a grain of salt. They’ve lead me astray more than once with “advice.”

So John Mueller, the current Google SEO community outreach authority, admits people still like .com domains and likely will continue to use them. What do you think about Google saying “People still like .com’s?”..

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[Jurgen Wolf]

Yes, something like .pw or .tk is not clickable, I agree...
But .PRO/.net/.org/.info and other normal/major TLDs are absolutely clickable...

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

+ snippet, which is displayed in SERP, has a significantly higher impact on clickability than TLD...

 

[EmotiveDomains]

After .com I agree most users have a reasonable level of understanding and trust for .net, .org and .info and of course their own country specific extensions, but that's about as far as it goes.

Google are saying people still like .com, and their the ones who have access to all the Click Through Rates for all the extensions in their search results.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

I earn $xx monthly on clicks on my .PROs...
And overall, parking - is the best place to understand domaining and what is actually clicked and in demand...

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

But I agree, in the USA .com is some kind of religion...

 

[Rainmaker-NL]

When I type divorce org into Google - I see "Did you mean: divorce.org" warning...

No warning here, just the results.
And I can understand that Google thinks I might have meant divorce.org when I type divorce org, but why no warning?
And the other strange thing is, when I type: org divorce, what misspelling would Google make out of that?
Still, all results on the first page are .org websites....
And when I type: net divorce, I get a page where the first 3 results are .com and all the others are .net.......
Still a misspelling?
And to make things funnier, when I type: net divroce, Google does give me a notification. They give me the results for net divorce and give me the option to look for net divroce.
So, what they do, if I am correct and follow your rules, Google here corrects my misspelling of divorce, they notify me of it, and they also correct my misspelling of net, but they dont notify me of it, and I get a page where the first 3 results are .com and the rest is .net......
I am lost for words.....

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

It shows me this warning above results...

 

[Rainmaker-NL]

It shows me this warning above results...

Like I said, no warning above my results......

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

No problems, I already answered you which algorithm is used to process such queries...
It is absolutely unrelated to standard ranking.

 

[Rainmaker-NL]

How do you explain that the results for 'divorce net' are different from 'net divorce'? Does Google correct a different misspelling in that second case? And if yes, what missspelling is net divorce?
And why do they suggest me to give the results for 'net divorce' in stead of 'net divroce' if net divorce is also a misspelling?
I really want to believe you, but up to now I have seen very little proof that logically explains the results Google gives me.

 

[Martin Scurry]

people understad .com is synonyms of internet thats why people like .com

 

[poweredbyme]

I think they want to say extensions will not be used for ranking therefore don't register them for better SERP rankings. There are many very high CPC keywords in the form of domain extensions around like creditcard, accountant, lawyer. They want to say if you register best creditcard or best lawyer, the creditcard and lawyer parts will not be counted in the algorithm.

 

[Jurgen Wolf]

It really depends on certain country...
For example, in Poland and Russia .com is not even 2nd choice TLD among endusers...

 

[ChelseaDott]

Everybody is mostly familiar with .com at the end. Even in schools, most TLDs aren't discussed but .coms.

 

[Robert91]

.coms are popular but not everywhere

 

[Emmy101]

There are more .coms than other extension, most people will firstly assume that any domain is a .com.
Personally I don't care about the extension when I click a search result I know Google will (most of the time) pick the highest quality result and put it in the fist line regardless of the extension.
.com isn't always better than other extensions compare between XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.com and XXX.net in this case the net is the winner.

 

[Emmy101]

No warning here, just the results.
And I can understand that Google thinks I might have meant divorce.org when I type divorce org, but why no warning?
And the other strange thing is, when I type: org divorce, what misspelling would Google make out of that?
Still, all results on the first page are .org websites....
And when I type: net divorce, I get a page where the first 3 results are .com and all the others are .net.......
Still a misspelling?
And to make things funnier, when I type: net divroce, Google does give me a notification. They give me the results for net divorce and give me the option to look for net divroce.
So, what they do, if I am correct and follow your rules, Google here corrects my misspelling of divorce, they notify me of it, and they also correct my misspelling of net, but they dont notify me of it, and I get a page where the first 3 results are .com and the rest is .net......
I am lost for words.....

Google is an ai it learns from the patterns of searches and the clicks done by it's users Google will try to assume what are you looking for based on what it learns from previous users.

 

[enlytend]

I typed two words: divorce org
Just check all the results on page one.
Then I typed: divorce net
Just check all the results on page one.
The words org and net arent words that really occur on the homepages of the sites that pop up one page one of the search results.

Home page text isn't the only place where search engines find context. Net and Org can be found in title tags and/or anchor text of those pages. Anchor text is something most people don't think of. If your domain is example.org, you're going to get links with the anchor text "example.org". If your domain is "fruit.fly" and you get links that say "fruit.fly" and "visit fruit.fly" you're likely to pick up some rankings for "fruit fly", even if the site is about fruit, not insects.

As for .com - in situations where people can see the URL in the search results, testing shows they're more likely to click on something familiar (i.e. "safe.") User interaction in relation to seo is a controversial topic, but let's say your page ranks #3 for a query and searchers click much more frequently on results #4 and #5, why would Google leave your page at #3? Whether rankings change or not, getting fewer clicks would dampen the benefit to being #3.

BTW, just to clarify one other thing - while he is one of their more visible spokespersons, John Mu isn't head of the webspam team. He's a webmaster trends analyst and runs online webmaster Q&A sessions. Big difference.

 

[GoKaizen]

Did @enlytend read the article?

http://www.domainanimal.com/people-still-like-coms-says-googles-john-mueller/

 

[Brandworthy]

I know what he said, but can you give me a logical explanation why all results on page one have a tld that exactly matches my second search keyword?

Google thinks your query is navigational, and show's you the best match for your domain query. It's an edge-case, and for any query that doesn't look like you entered a domain they'll ignore the TLD for most part.