What is better for search engines?

[peppy]

Does it matter if you have the .com name or the .net name in regards to search engine rankings? I never really understood if it made a different but I only buy .coms. Let me know what you think

thanks

 

[tristanperry]

No, I'm pretty sure it doesn't. Only the actual keywords of the domain (should) matter to search engines.

 

[MeanerDomainer]

How about rare ccTLDs instead of .NET?
Do search engines prefer porn.com over porn.cx?

 

[cache]

I thought it matters

 

[Damion]

Basically it doesn't matter, but if you're targeting a specific geographic location like for instance optimizing for a phrase like Manchester Flower Wholesale it would be wise to have your site hosted in the U.K. and having a .co.uk / org.uk extension for your website.


Other then that (specific geographic location) extensions don't matter to SE's, authority is what matters, work on increasing your authority and your rankings will improve.

 

[onewordonly]

I have found dot coms seem to get ranked and indexed better by Google from my own experience.

 

[Damion]

It's your own authority building efforts such as building quality backlinks and good quality content and creating a friendly URL structure for your overall site that caused your site to get indexed well and enjoying good rankings, really... it's not the .com extension that caused this to happen in any way.

You may perceive it this way, that the .com extension had any influence, but it's not, it's a mix up of misunderstanding cause and effect.

Which is the cause for many people thinking that .edu or .gov domains have by definition a priority card in the eyes of search engines as well.