Dot What?

Which extensions work best?

[wildegray]

Obviously .edu's and .com's are heavy hitters, but when it comes to .net and .org, I don't know what to do for sure. I do know for a fact, and from a very reliable source, that .net's and ."some foreign country's extension" are viewed as suspect more readily than the former -- not that they will be penalized, but they are more likely to be subject to personal review by Google. Any thoughts on which way to swing when there is no other alternative?

[webdoctor]

...more likely to be subject to personal review by Google

You should build your site so that it can survive a personal review by Google.

If you have any success in the SERPS in a competitive field, you can bet that the competition will report you for spamming [google.com]. You need to be able to survive that.

[andrea99]

I think webdoctor's advice is more important than your choice of extension.

Originally the schema naively intended that .com was commercial, .net was a system site (ISP, web host), .org was a non commercial organization, .edu was an educational institution.

But since these extensions are not regulated the designations are only roughly followed and may not be accurate. Only .gov and .mil are regulated.

I think .com is still the most desirable for many reasons even if your site is not technically commercial and will probably do best with Google (if there is truly a difference). I don't think any extension will by itself provoke a review by Google unless it is some obscure extension using some well known domain fraudulantly, like google.xyz for instance--that's an opinion.

[justraquel]

I suggest buying all of the extensions for your domain name. This is beneficial because if your website becomes very popular, someone may buy one of the extensions and then take away some of your traffic.

[wildegray]

Thanks for all of your replies. Given the accuracy of your opinions I hope you all reply to this as well:
I suppose what I meant to ask was more along the lines of whether or not these different extensions have competitive weight values in ranking decisions. All things being equal, will a .com overshadow a .net or, in an extreme circumstance (which I don't deal with, but just out of curiosity and for future reference) a .be or .uk?
Of course buying all of them is the best route, but unfortunately it's not always an option if I'm vying for a particular phrase.

Thanks again for your replies.

[wildbest]

.com is the king.

If you have different competing .com and .net sites, the .com gets not less than 10% of the traffic intended for .net