Simple yes or no question

peacestone

peacestone

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Sep 10, 2009
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Is there such a thing as a .info keyword domain that has good SERP rank for that particular keyword in a relatively competitive niche?

It seems like the consensus is on WF that .info domains are junk, not even worth the $0.89 to buy them - but I have one saved for a site that I am looking to get started on and have been having second thoughts on the domain now for weeks.

Your insight is much appreciated.......:338:
 


TLD doesn't matter for the most part. It could effect your conversions however. I'd prefer .com or bust.
 
Thanks for the inputs. Has anybody else heard of such a thing or do you see that .info's ALL get penalized heavily by the engines since they are so fucking cheap and mainly spam sites.

The good thing about my site plan is that its going to be an informational site with subtle aff links/ high paying adsense/ so my train of thought is if it ranks for the keyword I will be targeting in the domain than potential visitors will see it on the results page and think "that must have the 'info' that Im lookin fo"

Its really either try that, or go with a .net with a hyphen in the middle of the two words or keep looking for an available .com that is heavy.

As an example:

1. swineflu.info

or:

2. swine-flu.net

or:

3. keep looking for .com

Need to make a decision soon all input is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
 
peacestone said:
... do you see that .info's ALL get penalized heavily by the engines since they are so fucking cheap and mainly spam sites.
Click to expand...

Now you are asking the same question the other way around, so simple yes or no answers might be confusing.
 
Yes. Google inurl:.info, then compare those results by searching for the term. They won't be as common I wouldn't think, but they can be an authority site if enough effort is put into them.
 
Ok my opinion...

1. .info's are really fucking cheap and some registrars even give/gave them away.
2. spammers love cheap domains.
3. Google has completely removed .info's from its search results for a while in the past.

I'd bet my left nut that if the Google algorithm doesn't outright penalize .info's it sure as shit doesn't give them any kind of bonus like .com/.orgs get.
 
I've seen a .info rank almost #1 for a pretty competitive keyword. I was pretty amazed to say the least. It's probably a lot fucking harder to get the .info to the top than it would be a .com. Just spend the couple dollars and get a .com. I would only use .info in a short term PPC.

As somebody already suggested, your conversions will probably take a little hit as well. People tend to click on a .com more than a .info.
 
While the TLD shouldn't affect your SEO efforts negatively, it can affect people's ability to remember your domain. People have been programmed to remember .com's so try to get the .com whenever you can. Avoid hyphens for the same reason - people don't remember to put hyphens in. This assumes that your site is memorable enough that people want to come back to it and they only remember the name.

So, if you have "swine-flu.info" and it's a great site about swine flu, you may lose traffic to people typing in "swineflu.com" same with "swine-flu.com". People will not remember that the TLD is .info or remember to add the hyphen.
 
Thanks for all this input. I ended up dishing the .info and even the .net and bought a more brandable .com that contains the main keyword and another word, like swinefluhype.com to continue with this example. I noticed while .info's may exist on the 1st page of the serp's (for competitive keywords/niches) they are few and far between. So that leads me to believe that either:

A. nobody spends any time and effort on building them to dominate or
B. the big G slaps the fuck out of them right as the confirmation email gets sent from the registrar (like what ChrisS says).

So - not worth the risk of wasting my time and effort if B is actually true

Also going on what SEO Mike is saying above, swineflu.com already exists. So people that might come to my site, like it, than want to come back to it, will likely search "swineflu.com" and not swineflu.info or swine-flu.net. So I likely wont show up #1 if they are looking for me.

That is probably why A. above is true.
 
ChrisS said:
Ok my opinion...

1. .info's are really fucking cheap and some registrars even give/gave them away.
2. spammers love cheap domains.
3. Google has completely removed .info's from its search results for a while in the past.

I'd bet my left nut that if the Google algorithm doesn't outright penalize .info's it sure as shit doesn't give them any kind of bonus like .com/.orgs get.
Click to expand...
When it comes to SEO........ Listen to this guy, trust me.
 
peacestone said:
It seems like the consensus is on WF that .info domains are junk, not even worth the $0.89 to buy them
Click to expand...

A "consensus"??? Hardly the case.

google check PR (true, 10 million backlinks help but most are worthless)

I can also point you directly to a single word rebill product where a .info ranks top 20 with < 1000 links. Several top 5 rankings for longer tails.

Say whatever you want about .info domains ... I don't care much about brandability, moreso rankability. I'll take a .info over most tlds and a majority of the mykeywordphrase.com or keyword-phrase.com type of domains.

All that said, I honestly don't own very many of them. Just pointing out the facts here.

ChrisS said:
I'd bet my left nut that if the Google algorithm doesn't outright penalize .info's it sure as shit doesn't give them any kind of bonus like .com/.orgs get.
Click to expand...

This is a true statement. Nothing gets a similar bonus to the com/net/org one ... unless you're trying to rank for a word where the tld can be considered lsi to a keyword
 
A "consensus"??? Hardly the case.
Click to expand...
I might not have read all posts on this topic, but from what I remember reading before I started this thread it seemed like most ppl here believe that .info's get penalized by the engines and/or they are just a plain shitty domain to build a quality sight with.

It appears that you disagree with that, but agree that .com/net/org's get a "bonus" rather than .info's get a penalty.

To me that sounds the same.

... unless you're trying to rank for a word where the tld can be considered lsi to a keyword
Click to expand...
Please expound on this, I didn't quite get what you mean.

Thanks.

BTW - I havent completly dumped the .info alltogether, was planning on throwing a bunch of relevant content on it, using it in some kind of mini net to link to my main site and checking the page results to see if the theory is true for the .info.
 
Well, I don't notice any difference. I have a bunch of dot infos and they do fine. But those are targeting low competition longtails, so I don't know, for high competition keywords they might not stand up. If I'm aiming for search traffic then I don't worry about it.

One area I noticed a difference though is with some porn redirects I promoted with videos that have the address watermarked. I used a domain like hookersluts.info for testing, then changed to something like hookersluts.tv and I started getting a lot more traffic. Because these clips were on video sites, .tv made sense to viewers so they remembered it and typed it in properly. So if you're trying to brand a site .com is probably good for that kind of reason, like SEO_Mike was saying.
 
Boiling this down:

For purely SEO purposes the TLD doesn't mean shit. In other words, there is nothing wrong with a .info

For brandability and simple memorability, then the .com is king.
 
ChrisS said:
Ok my opinion...
1. .info's are really fucking cheap and some registrars even give/gave them away.
2. spammers love cheap domains.
3. Google has completely removed .info's from its search results for a while in the past.
Click to expand...

^ This. A quick search can show you problems with .info names in the past.
 
peacestone said:
I might not have read all posts on this topic, but from what I remember reading before I started this thread it seemed like most ppl here believe that .info's get penalized by the engines and/or they are just a plain shitty domain to build a quality sight with.

It appears that you disagree with that, but agree that .com/net/org's get a "bonus" rather than .info's get a penalty.

To me that sounds the same.
Click to expand...

I deal almost exclusively in exact matches these days, too many low hanging fruits available. So when I say .com gets a bonus, that's specifically what I'm talking about ... .info gets a bonus too but IMO, not as much of one as a .com but more of one than a .cn or .it (for example) when trying to rank on google.com. ..... much, much more of a head start than jflsafoi.com would

When dealing with seo, you've got some aspects of a site you can upgrade (content, links, ....) and some things you're stuck with (domain age, exact match/keywords in domain). When I'm attacking something, i want as much of a head start as I can possibly get.

I'm also rare on WF because I'm about 90% exclusive to SEO. For PPC, the .com brand is great for memory and also increases CTR (so I've heard) due to the trust involved with this tld. But imagine if the average sheeple was searching for a doctor, would they trust clicking a .MD domain? Sure. More than a .com? Debatable, but possibly.

The PPC bias of this forum is why you'll hear some ramblings about .info being shit ... they're just uneducated about how seo works (if they're even talking about it at all). Still, the average member here is probably smarter than you'll find on most other forums, WF is just that special. 2 of my top 3 trusted sources are members here, that says a lot as I've read a ton of people's opinions over the past decade. In the end, mine's the only one that matters to my business.

peacestone said:
Please expound on this, I didn't quite get what you mean.
Click to expand...

Check out the words in bold ... that's the LSI I'm talking about. It's basically synonyms. So for instance, if google finds a page about grapes they would also expect the words wine & vineyards to be on the page. So .. if you're trying to rank for "keyword faq" then a .info name might give you a bump.

disclaimer: I'm kind of speaking out of my ass here and have never done any hardcore testing on this particular aspect of seo since there are many easier ways to rank. It seems logical for the most part and the truth is, google will never verify anything about their algo so we'll never know for sure ... I've also never noticed a bolded tld in the serps so I might be totally wrong. I'm open to that.
 
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