SEO - TLD Domains
 

Seems every country now wants their own domain extensions.

All things being equal (backlinks, content, age of domain, etc), do .coms generally rank higher then country codes in the search engines, or does it really not matter what extension you purchase?

If you have a non-english site its becoming more and more important to host on a CTLD and a "domestic" IP. So, in this case, coms generally do not rank higher.