Domain Names Forum

However ... and it's a BIG however ... with a "backwater" TLD it may be harder to do those right things, so SEO could be undermined by indirect factors.

When someone else controls the .com versions you can expect that users' ingrained dot-com habits will cause your promotions to drive traffic to your competitor. Maybe a little, maybe a lot.

Also, you may have trouble getting other webmasters to view the domain seriously (harder to get links), because they take the .info domain as evidence that you're a johnny-come-lately.

It only costs a few bucks so grab the domain if it's still available. But I'd urge you to keep thinking and come up with a name where you could own the .com.

If you think about it there are far more ways to test whether a site is worth indexing. The object of a search engine is to provide best possible sites for their users.

If an engine disadvantaged all sites within a TLD simply because of the TLD that would be a pretty poor algorithm.

.info has the advantage where people are looking for information about a subject as "widgets info" will make up part of the searches for "widgets" especially in highly competitive areas which have sites with lots of hard sells.