.info domains and search engines
 

I have seen it said there is a penalty on info domains with the search engines... How true is this?

but thinking about it, I cannot off the top of my head name any top result sites that are an info domain.

opinions/experiences?

for the record I have had decent results with info domains, but nothing spectacular.

.info's have their place, in the center of any major seo project is not it...

keyword.com vs. keyword.info
If its the same content, the .com wins

But .info is not a bad domain.

Its better to have keyword.info than free-keyword.com

So it comes down to content, competition and keyword

I think this was discussed @ ADX and most ppl say its only a rumor, no problems with info domains.
I use dozens for blogs, and have decent results with them.
But I am not an expert, so wait for Rochard or JD or other Blog Experts to tell you some more details.

I rarely ever see a .info show up in the first or second page results in Google for terms or phrases. I guess it depends how competitive the terms are, but it does seem that the preference sways toward other TLDs and a .info only in special cases. The .info probably has to work harder for the same traffic or rankings. So a name like vangoghinfo.com unfortunately seems to have a greater SE benefit than a name like vangogh.info

I wouldn't use a .info for a main seo project, but use them to throw up blogs, and little landing pages etc that you will use to link back into your main site.

total BS like most seo rumors out there.

well Chomsky uses a .info hor his domain and is tops for "chomsky" but that of course may not be the best example, but relevant to thread

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...earch&aq=f&oq=

yahoo will gladly place .info's in the top for terms

yep, atleast in google.

True, not the best example because there's likely a lot of link popularity and authority sites linking to it. "Results 1 - 10 of about 3,490 linking to chomsky.info" But with SEO you shouldn't look at the exceptions to the rule. You have to take into account the more likely answer. People with a lot of domains and are generally good at getting their names in the upper rankings know it's a lot harder to get a .info up there with the same techniques that almost always works with a .com for example. Even so, I like .info names and especially the good one or two word names.

Work harder or work smarter.

If you have a keyword.info or even keywordkeyword.info it can be a smart move. The main reason they 'may' be devalued is because of the cost of registering them, when you could bang off 2$ throwaway domains, well, keyword being 'throwaway'. They of course realize and experienced a high level of spam results from such domains just because they were tossaway registrations.

That don't mean they all suck, but you are more often guilty til proven innocent then the other way around. But it would be relevant, ie, I would use bigtits.info and push for rank with it.

Although I would agree with this example, I would rather have a .com with the keyword (2 or three phrase keyword) and no dashes then a .com with a dash anywhere in it. Dashes might be penalized, as I have a domain for a term with dashes, and absolutely NO love from Google (like zero search hits and it is indexed, but 950'd).

Either way, if you want SEO hits, you need a .com with no dashes. If that's not possible, then move to .net, but stay clear away from .info - they are useless. :2 cents:

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

while the rule of thumb is .info is inferior, and if you check SE results, you won't see alot of .infos. in my experience, if it's not a high-competition keyword you're rockin', you can still get top spots just as easily.

i can just say lol,i have couple of .info domains at the 1#st positions at the google..