Will identical 2nd. level domain be lower than .com

Is xyz.xxx (any TLD but .com) inherently worse than .com

[ThomasAJ]

Hmmm hard to describe this question clearly and consisely :)

I thought this topic may be old hat but I could not find any reference to it anywhere on WebmasterWorld after 30 mins of searching.

e.g. my keyword is 'xyz' but xyz.com is taken. However all the other common TLDs are available for xyz.

So even though xyz.net or xyz.org etc. is a commercial site, will it rank as well as xyz.com when say content and inbound links etc. are identical.

Put another way.
Is there a penalty by Google when commercial sites use non .com TLDs?

Thanks
Tom

[Marcia]

No penalty at all Tom, but the problem is that people automatically assume the .com it's so common, so it could mean losing type-in traffic to them.

Google's scoring is based on 100 variables = page relevancy, inbound links and Page Rank determine it for the individual site, regardless of whether it's com, net or org.

[Hardwood Guy]

Tom:

If it makes any difference I have a .net because someone else has the .com I wanted but I do not sell a product, rather a service. I haven't seen anything out of the ordinary. Maybe others can enlighten us? As a matter of fact I can't even get the "competitor" site to come up in any search with the title.

Ken