Google: No, New TLDs Won’t Give You A Ranking Boost

Mar 16, 2012 at 9:46am ET by Barry Schwartz

Google’s head of search spam, Matt Cutts, said on his Google+ page that using the new TLDs will not give you a ranking boost in Google.

Matt Cutts said, “I don’t expect a new TLD to get any kind of initial preference over .com, and I wouldn’t bet on that happening in the long-term either.”

Cutts said this in response to a story published on markingmag.com.au where the CEO of a domain name registrar claimed that the “new TLD web addresses” will “automatically be favoured by Google over a .com equivalent.” Matt Cutts that he “needs to debunk this misconception.”

As we covered last June in our article What The New ICANN Domain Names Mean For Google Rankings & SEO: Nothing – the new TLDs will have no direct impact on rankings in Google and Matt Cutts of Google just said it one more time.

Here is Matt’s full post:

I read a post by someone offering new top-level domain (TLDs). They made this claim: “Will a new TLD web address automatically be favoured by Google over a .com equivalent? Quite simply, yes it will.”

Sorry, but that’s just not true, and as an engineer in the search quality team at Google, I feel the need to debunk this misconception. Google has a lot of experience in returning relevant web pages, regardless of the top-level domain (TLD). Google will attempt to rank new TLDs appropriately, but I don’t expect a new TLD to get any kind of initial preference over .com, and I wouldn’t bet on that happening in the long-term either. If you want to register an entirely new TLD for other reasons, that’s your choice, but you shouldn’t register a TLD in the mistaken belief that you’ll get some sort of boost in search engine rankings.

About The Author: Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry's personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here. For more background information on Barry, see his full bio over here. See more articles by Barry Schwartz

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http://hauntingthunder.wordpress.com/ Maurice Walshe

Good to hear that Matt is commenting on that I work in house for a BIG publisher (FTSE 100) and our MD has all ready had spam from the new TLD’s claiming that they are magic for SEO which we had to respond to
http://ForcingFunction.com Ben Spak

Wow people are gullible.