I am still personally struggling with the .info domain extension and am starting to wonder if it should be considered a viable option for anyone looking to get a new website off the ground. It’s low initial price and availability for some domain names have made it an option many are considering, but it seems to have its challenges as well.
As mentioned in a previous post, the .info domain seems to be a bit of a mystery. Domains with the .info extension have shown up as highly ranked in numerous web searches I have conducted in both research mode for keyword research and in normal web browsing. After originally perceiving the presence of a .info domain in the top results as a “weak” market that could be entered more easily, after some additional research it appeared that .info could rank well on its own and shouldn’t be considered as an automatic exclusion like some of the other non-.com, .net, or .org domain extensions.
With this as my background, I went back and found some keyword research that was discarded because of the absence of available .com, .net, or .org domain names and selected the most promising ones and picked them up with a recent order as I needed them to put my order over the amount to qualify for free private registration and at 99 cents each the math worked out well.
With one of the domains on a topic that already interested me that could be written about easily it quickly had a little over 10 pages of original content on it. It has links from a few other websites similar to other strategies used before, and Google just doesn’t seem to give it any love. I would be ok if it still wasn’t ranking highly for its keywords, but it isn’t even indexed yet by Google. The site includes things that normally bring the search engines running like using Wordpress and submitting a sitemap. It has also been manually submitted to each search engine.
If it were performing in a similar weak fashion in the other major search engines that would also help me to understand that something else was going on, but it ranks in the top 10 for its keywords in both Yahoo and Bing and seemed to accomplish its indexing and initial ranking there in normal timeframes.
This anecdotal evidence appears to support the idea that Google is placing the .info domain extensions into its “Google Sandbox” for a while before allowing them to make it into the index and results. It will be interesting to continue to follow these results and see how long it takes to make it into the Google index and rankings.
This information seems to indicate that if you go with a .info domain extension you should be prepared to wait a while for Google results and be prepared to exist on Bing/Yahoo for organic search traffic at first.
If you have had a better experience with .info domain names or have any tips to share that helped you in ranking and indexing them please share in the comments.
Search for your .info domains at GoDaddy or search from the box below:
Filed under Build a Web Site, Domain Name Selection by on Aug 29th, 2010. 1 Comment. 
Choosing which domain name extension can often be confusing to someone new to selecting domain names. The most popular is of course the .com extension, with the .net and .org following relatively close behind. Originally intended to have more specific uses for technical sites or organizations, the latter two extensions became popular for general usage as the .com versions of the desired names became more scarce.
If possible, in almost all cases, the .com version should be selected. This is the defacto standard for web addresses and anyone typing in a web address without the extension is likely to end up there. (Not always, but often). .Com just seems like the default web address extension to non internet marketing people and is a default unless given to them specifically as .net or .org. However, in search engines and indexing .net and .org both seem to get their share of the love as well.
In my personal experience the differences between these three domain name extensions is minimal from the impacts on SEO, search rankings, and indexing. Since I am writing an article on this, I must choose, so in order based only on anecdotal experience, my ranking based on preferred would be .com, .org, then .net from first to third preference.
Go with the version that is available in your chosen keywords with the above ranking of the top 3 extensions as your guide. In my opinion, stay away from almost all of the other domain extensions like .biz (more on .info in a minute) as in general they don’t seem to fare as well although with the right work, content, and linking they also could likely do ok, but be aware it will be many times harder with that working against you.
Based on the article headline, you are probably wondering about the .info domain. The .info domain appears to be a bit of an enigma. In doing keyword and site research, multiple .info domains have showed up in the top 10 of Google so it definitely can rank well as an extension. And at under a dollar a pop at some registrars for the first year, they can seem attractive from a cost standpoint.
This is how my first .info domain was picked up. I needed a few more domain names to get my free private registration so I added a few .infos to my cart for a buck each. From that has developed my experience that getting these .info domains indexed and ranking in Google is more challenging than the above mentioned (.com, .net, .org) extensions. I have a .info domain with over ten original posts on it written by me on an area of personal knowledge that has a few links back to it that is still not indexed by Google. Not even for just the homepage. It is still less than three months old, so maybe it is just stuck in the infamous “Google Sandbox”, but based on indexing experience with other sites, it should at least be indexed by now. Yahoo and Bing don’t seem to have the same issue, as the site went in to those two engines on approximately the same timeframe as other sites have done.
Armed with this information about domain name extensions, I hope you can go forth and make a better informed decision on a domain name selection. And if you decide to go with a .info domain and have a better experience, please come back and share it in the comments.
Filed under Build a Web Site, Domain Name Selection, How to Start a Web Business, Starting a Web Business by on Aug 16th, 2010. Comment.
This post is an index/table of contents for the 30 part Build a Website series of posts.
1) Keyword research – 1
2) Keyword research – 2
3) Keyword research – 3
4) Buy domain name
5) Get Web Hosting
6) Setup Domain and email, Change nameservers
7) Install Wordpress, Setup FTP
8 ) Plug-ins
9) Themes
10) Google Analytics, Google Webmaster Tools
11) Privacy policy, Disclaimer,General, and contact form
12) Pages vs Posts, Wordpress Setup
13) Submit url to Search Engines (Google, Yahoo, and Bing)
14) Add Articles and Content – (Outsource possible)
15) Twitter/RSS
16) Squidoo and Hubpages
17) Ezinearticles
18) Adding Youtube videos
19) Adding Images
20) Backlinks
21) Build Traffic and Links – Social Networks
22) Build Traffic and Links – Blog Commenting
23) Build Traffic and Links – Forum Commenting
24) Build Traffic and Links – Article Marketing
25) Build Traffic and Links – Directories, DMOZ
26) Add Forums – Taaki/SMF
27) Monetize the site
28) Build a future plan
29) Add an Opt-in form, Email List, Aweber
30) Advertising page, Guest posting, User Generated Content