This is How Google Handles New Top Level Domains

[Arpit131]

With the coming of many new generic top level domains (gTLDs), Google would like to give some insight into how these are handled in Google's search.

Here is the complete list of questions published by Google:

Q: How will new gTLDs affect search? Is Google changing the search algorithm to favor these TLDs? How important are they really in search?

Q: What about IDN TLDs such as .みんな? Can Googlebot crawl and index them, so that they can be used in search?

Q: Will a .BRAND TLD be given any more or less weight than a .com?

Q: How are the new region or city TLDs (like .london or .bayern) handled?

Q: What about real ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) : will Google favor ccTLDs (like .uk, .ae, etc.) as a local domain for people searching in those countries?

Q: Will Google support my SEO efforts to move my domain from .com to a new TLD? How do I move my website without losing any search ranking or history?


Find all the answers in this article published on Official Google Webmaster Central Blog

 

[JB Lions]

No, it does not save you money long time.

With respect to versatility - there is absolutely nothing technical about .com that makes it better (or different) than any of the new ones, so your versatility argument gives the appearance that you have been eating some really special mushrooms.

Yes, it does, we went over that before. And your only point is nothing technical better? Who cares. That's not why it sells. There is a reason it's still getting 90/100 top sales. Technical doesn't come into play. You can't seem to figure out why it's selling like that. What do these companies get that you don't? That you devoted a whole post to that and nothing else, a useless point, means you have lots to learn yet.

Quoting a journal everyone knows is incomplete is not helping. You know as well as everyone here that most sales never get reported.

The amount of sales not reported on DNJ in any given week is incredibly high. Most sales are private and kept confidential. Many do not even know dnjournal or bother reporting a sale. Then we have registrar sales. Those are still sales and those are usually in the 5-figure range. If you'd do your research you'd realize that the numbers 18/20 top sales no longer applies because of all the sales behind closed doors to big corporations.

There's huge money flowing into TLDs and its not solely for brand protection. A blind man can see that. There's data you do not have access to that is worth investigating. And it draws a pretty clear picture.

Comparing COM and gTLD sales at this point is very much the most pointless argument you can make. We're in year 2, whereas COM is in year 30. Now go back to DOT COMs year 2, it wasn't even on anyone's radar.

And the argument that prices are too high? Look at DOT COM prices, initially after the free-phase they were as high as $75 right?. Now compare that to the average price tag of $30 for new gTLDs. Of couse you have to participate in auction and EAP for the gems, we're living in a capitalistic world and ICANN has changed a lot since the early days.

With inflation in mind, COM prices were prob around $100 then

90/100 top sales .com. You say don't compare, too early. Well, if you knew history, you would realize the bigger sales tend to happen more at the beginning. Look at .mobi, over 10 sales over $100,000, now where are they at? There is more hope and hype at the beginning, then reality starts to kick in. We have plenty of data on this already. Not meeting expectations reg wise, lack of good sales etc. Lots of sales not reported, I get that but that's for every extension. If they were all reported, .com would probably get 100/100 top sales.

And comparing .com in year 2, others have done that before, it'll always be ridiculous since there were no browsers then, hence no sites. Do people know why the domains were bought when you couldn't do sites yet? Have you considered it's why some are doing that now with some .brands and others?

So how about you share your new gtld sales then, round out the picture.

 

[JB Lions]

double post

 

[Nick]

At the moment only 2 .clubs rank high with .coms containing club . And they're on page 2.

http://www.50inda.club/
http://www.bombaybicycle.club/

1 has 100+ views a day , the other 200+ a day and seems both have no backlinks. Time will tell

For which search phrase?

 

[cmdomains]

I just used .club . Do a search with .com and you'll see the high ranking websites

The point being: You'll have to wait til this ngtld and these links to actually get a number of following (and i guess backlinks) for them to rank page 1, for them to be in their own limelight and not here being debated whether they're better than .com .net .org

 

[Kate]

The amount of sales not reported on DNJ in any given week is incredibly high. Most sales are private and kept confidential.

Absolutely true, the majority of sales are not reported. But that applies to any extension. The share percentages are still very telling. It's always the same extensions that are featured in DNJ and it's not by chance. It more or less reflects actual trends (what end users are buying).

Even if the actual sales volume is 10 times higher, the odds that you will make a sale remain very slim.

There's huge money flowing into TLDs and its not solely for brand protection. A blind man can see that. There's data you do not have access to that is worth investigating. And it draws a pretty clear picture.

What we can see is that they are not good for pure play domaining, and not even superior for SEO (to get back to the topic).

I don't think we are going to make money on new extensions. I don't think that we are going to lose a lot of money either, because they are not having a noticeable impact on established extensions.

You know, there's a lot of money flowing into dubious schemes like the surveillance state, the so-called war on terror etc. Doesn't mean it's money well spent.
Spending money is easy, getting a healthy return is not.

Comparing COM and gTLD sales at this point is very much the most pointless argument you can make. We're in year 2, whereas COM is in year 30. Now go back to DOT COMs year 2, it wasn't even on anyone's radar.

It's a bad comparison.
From 1985 to 1993, domain names were not valuable. It is the WWW that has made domain names popular as advertising/branding tools. Now the landscape is set. The domain name system is proven and mature. But the old extensions are firmly established, which is a problem for new extensions. Had they been released much earlier, the outcome could have been different. The landscape of today would be more diverse.
New extensions are coming much too late. Even 2000 was already too late. The few extensions released around that time have all been failures, even the most successful .biz and .info, are considered failures.
2015 is not a better time.

And the argument that prices are too high? Look at DOT COM prices, initially after the free-phase they were as high as $75 right?. Now compare that to the average price tag of $30 for new gTLDs. Of couse you have to participate in auction and EAP for the gems, we're living in a capitalistic world and ICANN has changed a lot since the early days.

With inflation in mind, COM prices were prob around $100 then

I'm not sure about what you mean. But let's dig some history.
In 1995 NSI was allowed to charge $100 (for 2 years) for previously free domain names, then the price dropped to $70 in 1997 (again for a two-year registration term). In 1999 the NSI monopoly ended when the first competing registrars entered the market.

By 2000 you could buy domains for $10 from the new discount registrars.
The fact is, .com domain names have been cheap for at least 15 years. Domain name are commoditized today.

Also, another important fact is that .com is regulated by the Icann contract. Verisign cannot increase the price at will. On the other hand, check out the new extensions. You may not enjoy the same protections because the framework is different. The result: zany pricing à la .tv and they even claw back on domains granted by mistake. Good way to foster trust.

 

[sOliver]

Registrars are reporting many gTLD sales and there have been plenty of 5-figures and 6-figures sales. Just look at all the EAP1 sales, there is sufficient hype.

And comparing .com in year 2, others have done that before, it'll always be ridiculous since there were no browsers then, hence no sites.

That's true, but you need to give gTLDs more time.

I believe mobi failed because it wasn't really innovative. If you create an extension for use on mobile phones then it should only accept sites that are optimized for mobile phones. They were a little too early to the game. Responsive designs came out years later. Now finally in 2015 we're officially at a stage where most sites are responsive because they have to in order to rank high. If they came out with mobi now it would have a much better chance of being accepted.

Google has plans to add "new functionality" to some of their extensions. How this will work I don't know yet.

When other corporations see how Google uses an extension in a new way, they may think, wow this is a great business opportunity, let's do something just like it.

What I want to illustrate is that extensions may emerge with completely new features and possibilities to consume content and this could increase interest in other extensions.


@Topic .. back on topic, if you read between the lines, Google may give a ranking bonus to .london, .berlin and so on in the future. They just dont have enough data right now. Of course that will only be relevant for traffic originating in those cities but that's still something and could be an indicator of how this is going to play out. The ranking advantages might never be very high but even if its just a tie-breaker then it could be worth it to some businesses.

 

[Nick]

I just used .club . Do a search with .com and you'll see the high ranking websites

The point being: You'll have to wait til this ngtld and these links to actually get a number of following (and i guess backlinks) for them to rank page 1, for them to be in their own limelight and not here being debated whether they're better than .com .net .org

Actually, searching for ".club" isn't an accurate way to gauge the ranking of those domains.

Instead, if you search "bombay bicyle", "bombay bicycles" or "bombay bicycle club"- bombaybicycle.club is the #1 result. If you search "bicycles bombay" or "bicycle clubs bombay", it's #3. "bicycle club bombay", it's #2. "bicycle clubs in bombay" it's #4".

Needless to say, that site has primo ranking for its target keywords, with just 5 backlinks.

 

[cmdomains]

Like I said , this ngtld will have to wait til their own limelight. All other Ngtlds will have to wait the same. Don't get me wrong I have my ngtlds.

bombay bicycle club for sure has #1 result, I won't argue. It's its own niche

It just seems to me that this whole thread is about ngtld vs .com

 

[cmdomains]

It's actually amusing.

 

[NPer]

Many here are forgetting that Google's main aim is to please domainers who type in "term" + 'new gtld" into the search bar.

That's why "plumber.xyz" ranks so well for "plumber xyz".

I just hope the old members here realize this sooner rather than later, or else...

:D

 

[Alice Wonder Miscreations]

Google's main aim to provide users with results relevant to their query so that the users don't go to bing, which would hurt google's ability to track them and serve relevant advertisements.

 

[NPer]

Google's main aim to provide users with results relevant to their query so that the users don't go to bing, which would hurt google's ability to track them and serve relevant advertisements.

That used to be the case. They are only thinking of domainers these days.

 

[sOliver]

I found http://www.spokaneplumber.xyz/ and it ranks #2 despite a 404

The power of exact match queries is still not completely meaningless as some believe. For example if you wanted to rank Vacations.com for the keyword Vacation Rentals without any links or content just the title tag, Google would rank Vacation.Rentals higher out of the box (no link building, no content).

That's just simple keyword SEO. However, if we use VacationRentals.com to rank for that keyword, Google would still rank Vacation.Rentals higher because the COM is a non-matching string that stands for company. So Google will understand that domain as "Vacation Rentals Company" whereas the other domain simply means "Vacation Rentals" (exact match to the query) and will rank higher.

From that perspective, new gTLDS have a lot of ranking advantages. However we all know this is not the only ranking factor. Googles approach is "brands are the solution" so they will rank VacationRentals.com higher if the content is good and a regular company (contact form, address, telephone, etc) is using it.

There are a lot of "finer details" beginners often miss like putting a phone number on there and letting a form convert. Basic stuff but it matters and then it doesnt really matter whether you own VacationRentals.com or Vacation.Rentals - both are just fine, both for marketing purposes and for SEO marketing as long as you know how to build a company on the internet.

 

[NPer]

I found http://www.spokaneplumber.xyz/ and it ranks #2 despite a 404

I was just joking about that

Who exactly is optimizing their page content for searches relating to "plumber xyz"?

I haven't checked, but I'd take a guess and say the search volume for the term is zero to none.

 

[sOliver]

I was just joking about that

Who exactly is optimizing their page content for searches relating to "plumber xyz"?

I haven't checked, but I'd take a guess and say the search volume for the term is zero to none.

Its actually a great example of how you can optimize new gTLD sites for specific keywords.

 

[JB Lions]

Its actually a great example of how you can optimize new gTLD sites for specific keywords.

You can do that with any extension that's ever existed. Of course with this example, it's a phrase nobody is the world searches for, except people in this thread. You could start a thread in this forum and title it Plumber XYZ and it'll probably be on page 1 within a few hours.

 

[pdevananth]

I just used .club . Do a search with .com and you'll see the high ranking websites

LOL :D

 

[sOliver]

You can do that with any extension that's ever existed. Of course with this example, it's a phrase nobody is the world searches for, except people in this thread. You could start a thread in this forum and title it Plumber XYZ and it'll probably be on page 1 within a few hours.

I am not talking about title optimization. Of course you can start a thread with Plumber XYZ and it will rank highly due to low competition.

But take plumber.com and plumber.xyz both without content, without backlinks just the title Plumber.xyz

Guess what name will rank higher. Plumber.com means plumber.company and not "plumber xyz", hence you will not rank as high in Google with the COM in this case.

You get it? And do you see how I will use that tactic to drive leads for my own business? Take a look at QuinnStreet and what they're doing and steal their ideas, you'll make a lot of money. Why would would they buy Insure.com and Insurance.com for millions? Aside from the business that existed on it that was already driving traffic they also bought it for the exact match that can lower their advertising costs in Google Adwords. Yes, exact match matters a great deal to drive costs down due to a factor called Quality Score.

I am done buying gTLDs now so I can disclose a few tricks and how much type-in traffic they receive over the next weeks. Some cool data to analyze. Fun stuff

 

[cmdomains]

^ pedevanth, isn't it ... funny

 

[JB Lions]

But take plumber.com and plumber.xyz both without content, without backlinks just the title Plumber.xyz

Guess what name will rank higher. Plumber.com means plumber.company and not "plumber xyz", hence you will not rank as high in Google with the COM in this case.

You get it?

Yes, but I don't think you do. It's plumber xyz, nobody searches for that. You think the same will apply for terms that actually get searched. Then you bring up Adsense when it's been posted in this forum which extension actually gets more clicks, you can figure that one out.

"I am done buying gTLDs now so I can disclose a few tricks and how much type-in traffic they receive over the next weeks."

Why would a new gtld get type in traffic?