Re: Does Google place more importance on .com site?
duongo75,
dot.com websites will typically do better for searches done outside of UK. On the other hand dot.co.uk websites will typically do better for UK based searches.
Google looks at where a website is hosted and whether the domain extension has a national bias. So typically a dot.com (or dot.net or dot.info) hosted in Germany (1&1) or the US (GoDaddy) will not perform as well as a dot.com hosted in UK. Following on from this a dot.co.uk hosted outside of the UK will still do well in UK searches as Google assumes by default that its targeted at the UK market.
Recently Google has introduced a facility in Webmaster Tools to state your primary national market. This gets round the overseas hosting problem.
In my opinion dot.com remains the prime domain extension for branding purposes. A dot.co.uk is useful if you want a site focused exclusively on the UK.
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