Does Google place more importance on .com site?

[duongo75]

Just have a quick query... i read somewhere (can't remember where though) that google places more 'importance' (if that's the correct word to use) on sites which are .com, rather than say .co.uk?

Is this true at all? Just curious.

Thanks

[dburdon]

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.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by duongo75

Just have a quick query... i read somewhere (can't remember where though) that google places more 'importance' (if that's the correct word to use) on sites which are .com, rather than say .co.uk?

Is this true at all? Just curious.

Thanks

Only to the extent that a Country TLD, as compared with the geographical location of the searcher, is a factor re. relevancy.

As a general rule, .com domains are not given any extra "weight."

[steveareeno]

dburdon-
I checked the webmaster tools for google and did not see what you are referring to? Can you give me more information on where to find it? (BTW...I usually cannot find my keys in the morning so forgive me if it is obvious.)

Thank you!

[blitzen]

Our dot-com is a US-based company whose host server is in Canada.
For the same keyword, the site ranks higher in Google Canada than Google US.

[deepsand]

Originally Posted by steveareeno

dburdon-
I checked the webmaster tools for google and did not see what you are referring to? Can you give me more information on where to find it? (BTW...I usually cannot find my keys in the morning so forgive me if it is obvious.)

Thank you!

Go to https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/sitetools . There you will see "Set geographic target" as one of the options.

BTW, if & when you find your keys, see if my spare car keys are there as well.

[Orion]

Originally Posted by blitzen

Our dot-com is a US-based company whose host server is in Canada.
For the same keyword, the site ranks higher in Google Canada than Google US.

are you in canada Blitzen? cause with localization now a Canadian server or Canadian company will rank higher for a search in Canada than a US Company will

I started using a US proxy so I can accurately obtain search results as if I were searching from the US.

[astro]

Far be it for me to disagree with better minds than mine.

But in days gone by there was software that showed the order of the search process. The order of search was (stress on "was" here) .com > .net > .org > .co.uk, if many thousands of results were collated then other countries domains were disregarded as too many results to display. Hence the reluctance to buy into .sp, .gr .fr .ca etc.

This caused the popular belief that .com was king.

Not so these days so they say.

However you still do not get the lesser known countries domains displayed very often. If you are selling spanish villas how many .sp results would returned for the search term Spanish + villas + sale?. Err....................none! However I cannot answer (don't speak spanish) if you search for the same search terms in spanish. However, how many spanish people are looking to buy spanish holiday villas? The question you have to ask is where is your target market?

Just for the record .com still floats my boat every time!

Astro

[Orion]

if you enter say ronboyd into your browser address bar that order still holds today.. it will bring up .com first etc... after .org it will go to YOUR country code. eg. for me here it will bring up .ca.

You should also find that if you are in UK that you will get more .co.uk results, japan .co.jp, austraila .com.au, canada .ca etc. This (I believe) is a newer feature as the search engines are trying to privide more and more localized searches for businesses on the web. Mostly a good thing I know it's always been frustrating for myself when I'm searching for something local and getting tons of results from other countries.

[ExtravagantMedia]

In the USA the order of preference is .com, .net, .org, .info
.info is the red headed step child though because they are used for spam A LOT because of how inexpensive they are.

[astro]

Hope this is not too off topic.......more of tangent or lateral thinking if you like, but another "bug" I have is the attempt of the lesser internet wise countries search engines (if I may call them this) force you to use local results from local engines, when you don't want them.

In Greece for example if you put G.com into the browser it returns G.gr.........very difficult to get round this. Last time I tried I was forced to visit MSN and searched for G.com then clicked on the link provided.

This reluctance to allow access to "world" results is no good what so ever if you operate across international borders and want to see what your targeted market is seeing! It is impossible to visit g.com from the address bar in your browser when in Greece, does anyone else find this annoying or is it just a me thing?

Astro

[Clarrie]

Originally Posted by Orion

if you enter say ronboyd into your browser address bar that order still holds today.. it will bring up .com first etc... after .org it will go to YOUR country code. eg. for me here it will bring up .ca.

You should also find that if you are in UK that you will get more .co.uk results, japan .co.jp, austraila .com.au, canada .ca etc. This (I believe) is a newer feature as the search engines are trying to privide more and more localized searches for businesses on the web. Mostly a good thing I know it's always been frustrating for myself when I'm searching for something local and getting tons of results from other countries.

About 18 months ago we did an experiment to to get an idea of how much Google were skewing results based on geographical / local factors.

We set up a clean machine with windows configured throughout as a US machine, and connected through a US based ISP and ran some search tests.

Wasn't a very scientific test but it proved to us that Google at least pre-filters results based on geographical location. Searching on .com through the "US" machine showed distinctly US oriented results, and .com from a UK setup machine strongly UK based - and also not much different from searching on google.co.uk.

So my view is if your market is local / national, the national domain suffix is not likely to hinder performance. Don't think it helps particularly, as I also find in practice .com ranks just as well.

Quite what mechanism Google uses to determine the location of a site I wouldn't like to say for certain, but server location, and site content (addresses etc) I suspect all play a part.

[qh4dotcom]

Originally Posted by duongo75

Just have a quick query... i read somewhere (can't remember where though) that google places more 'importance' (if that's the correct word to use) on sites which are .com, rather than say .co.uk?

Is this true at all? Just curious.

Thanks

Google gives more importance to the quality of incoming links to a website than the domain extension. Also it's more likely that people will remember your site if it's a .com than .co.uk

[martty]

Originally Posted by ExtravagantMedia

In the USA the order of preference is .com, .net, .org, .info.

Where did you get that from? It makes NO difference. Why would it?

[ExtravagantMedia]

Originally Posted by martty

Where did you get that from? It makes NO difference. Why would it?

In general I tend NOT to respond when someone questions something that I say because it leads to arguments.
It may be a placebo effect but I have found that most certainly .com is favored and.info performs the least well in my testing. This is not something I read in an ebook rather something that I've gathered from first hand trial and error. It may in fact be mistaken, I wouldn't challenge someone that disputes it because I've never done a real scientific test.

[davidweb]

Originally Posted by duongo75

Just have a quick query... i read somewhere (can't remember where though) that google places more 'importance' (if that's the correct word to use) on sites which are .com, rather than say .co.uk?

Is this true at all? Just curious.

Thanks

.co.uk is country specific, but it will do much better in google.co.uk.

.com on the other hand is not country specific and will score higher rankings worldwide.

.co.uk will yield better results when you are targeting UK region.

[myvasco]

If you host your .co.uk outside the UK and have no uk-Links on it, it won't do well on google.co.uk

Like always you choice of domain should not be too much SEO-oriented, than branding-oriented. What would your customers rember, would they be more comfortabel to click on a co.uk domain or a .com domain.

[ursfehr]

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.

[gavinscott]

If you are solely targeting the UK market you may find that UK users are more likely to click on a .co.uk result

[djarotstudio]

it should involving with data centers. google will search to the nearest data center ( which usually regional ) instead of the other data center. this what maintains the geographic targeting relevance to the search queries. and that would be also why result may differ when you use google.com / co.uk / co.jp and so on.

[Varshen]

All good points to take note on