Keywords in the domain

How effective with alternative tld's

[ggrot]

We all know that a number of engines like keywords in the url, especially in the domain. For example, do a google search for mp3. mp3.com comes up #1.
The new Yahoo directory relevance algorithm seems to give the keyworded domains a nice tip in the right direction as well. From looking at a few SERPs, I suspect that in yahoo this works well no matter what the tld is(this is actually what made me think about this). So, for kicks and grins, I pulled up my 10/10/01 wordspot top 200 report and plugged in some of the top 15 keywords into foreign domain searches(mostly register.com). This list is not exhaustive, as I got exhausted before finishing, but the following are all still available to register(and most with no restriction on the address of the company purchasing them):

shopping.ac
kelly-blue-book.(almost anything)
living.sh
living.com.ro
living.(lots of others)
research.to
research.com.ro
sports.lt
food.org.nz
food.cd

So, with the obvious exception of the major engines which filter by tld, would these domains be just as effective as their .com equivalents in achieving the keyword is domain boost, and in which engines do you think?

I realize this is a tough question to answer as the few domains that have been registered under new tld's are such a small percentage of the distribution that they don't show up all the time, but theories are welcome too. Would any engine dare penalize a domain because it was from a specific country's tld? Even if that penalization was just to not give it the keyword/domain boost.

[heini]

ggrot
Luckily for the majority of earth population itīs not that sites from other TLDs than dot.com are penalized by major SEs. In fact country specific TLDs as well as the org, net, are treated to my knowledge by all major SEs the same, including a possible keyword boost. Exception is perhaps a suggested preference in Google for the edu and perhaps gov.
Of course as you mention thereīs the issue of filtering in country specific SEs. Also itīs not always possible for anybody to obtain country TLDs.
The main reason for the run on the new TLDs in fact is people searching for keyword containing urls.

[IanTurner]

MSN certainly varies from location to location. My .co.uk sites that register well in msn.com searches here do not register as well in searches in North America.

[caine]

url's containing the kw's of the page or at index.htm level are a reinforcement to a good page and site's navigation and well considered content, as well as everything else.

Their are a few sites, one competitor that has relied on 14 websites, with url's denoting kw's, but the site's, hence the rest of the possible opto's were not considered in the manner they should be and when an individual, such as myself starts competing, i hasten to add without kw's in the url, only kw's at directory level, i wipe the floor off his rankss.

It's an aspect, with many others, that if needed then should be utilised to its fulliest, but in my case with some sites that i build, companies, want to keep identity in the url, and though i can see the downside if competition was gtting pr's of 7, luckily enough, their not, and i seem to be able to get round it.

[ggrot]

True, obviously its only a factor - not the deciding vote. But for mirror sites and things where you are actually bright enough to get decent PR, a unique site, directory listings, etc - this would probably help.

[2_much]

A downfall of this is viral marketing. People remember ".com" and type it in upon returning to a site, so you lose those visitors.

[ggrot]

In some cases. If you were trane and sold a/c units, trane.ac wouldn't be a bad domain. Besides, you could simply use the domain as a gateway to another, more memorable domain.