Impact of .net Domain Name

Does Google care?

[woop01]

I'm sure this is answered somewhere but I tried 10 different searches and couldn't find an answer. Relatively speaking, how much of an impact does having a .net domain name influence your SERPs?

I know I have a #4 ranking for one .net site but it's not all that extremely competetive a field and the sites I'm "competing" with are mainly .edu.

Thanks,

[rogerd]

The .net shouldn't hurt you, woop01. If you are competing with .edu domains, what is likely to hurt you more is the massive linkage and usually high PR of the bigger university sites. Trying to compete with harvard.edu or similar for links is fairly hopeless - you'll have to focus on getting the best links you can and creating well-targeted pages.

[pixel_juice]

I think a google search for php [google.com] answers this one pretty well - of an impressive 143 million pages, first is a .net, and we also have .org, .com, .de and .co.jp on the first results page.

Any recognised domain extension can rank as well as any other. It wouldn't make sense for search engines to differentiate between them since it is almost entirely unrelated to the relevance of a site to a search term.

[mcavic]

I agree with rogerd - .edu sites tend to have very high PR, but the others are probably pretty equal. Yale and Harvard both have PR9. Even Fontbonne has PR5, and they're small.

[bhartzer]

Be assured that you can still get high rankings (and maintain them) with a .net domain name.

[woop01]

Thanks for the info.

BTW, this site would be competing with .com domains. I was just using the other site as an example.

[grifter]

people don't buy stuff from .edu's.

[batdesign]

I've got a #2 positioned .net domain on it's main search phrase. I've never noticed any difference in rankings based on the domain suffix, aside from the advantage .co.uk domains have when searching for 'keyword keyword UK'.

[vincevincevince]

yes, there is the national preference which affects tld
and i believe that .edu .ac.uk are favoured, however whether this is because google KNOWS the are content rich likely to be searcher-pleasers, or because they have such large interlinked sites, who knows!

[GoogleGuy]

The TLD ending (.net) doesn't make any difference at all in rankings. If it's a natural thing for you to build your site around a .net, I'd do it.

[Darkness]

I think a google search for php answers this one pretty well - of an impressive 143 million pages, first is a .net, and we also have .org, .com, .de and .co.jp on the first results page.

Why does google Language Tools appear in a search for 'php'?

[Yidaki]

>Why does google Language Tools appear in a search for 'php'?

he, he, he, interesting question ....

... unfortunately we are not allowed to discuss specifics. ;)

There's still no way to find sites that link to googles language tools page using the anchor text php, or!?

To the initial question: allthough .net domains don't hurt or influence your ranking, i'd only use them if i'd offer net related infos / services / products. However, i'm a bit old shool influenced with this things. I still hate to see commercial sites using org domains ...