Roland LaPlante wrote a piece on Circle ID about new gtlds and SEO. Roland works at Afilias and it is safe to say he is an advocate of the new gtlds with Afilias having a vested interest. There are readers who are trying their hand at developing a new gtld or two so this article may be helpful for those who have questions and concerns with regards to SEO.
From the article:
With the arrival of hundreds of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), many marketers are excited that they can now get a web address that best describes their business or brand. For instance, a company in the organic business can now get a web address on .ORGANIC, or a brand that’s all about passion and excitement can now get on .RED, etc. At the same time, many are also asking some important SEO related questions:
- Will Google crawl new gTLDs?
- Will new gTLDs automatically score higher in Google’s search algorithms?
- What are the SEO best practices for migrating a site to a new gTLD?
- Should brands REALLY get on new gTLDs and give up the status quo?
Let’s address them one by one.
1. Will Google crawl new gTLDs?
The answer is simple: YES. Rumors were going around a while ago that a new site (on a new domain) may not get ranked as well as a site that has been registered on a domain, say, for three or more years. Google’s staff explained clearly in this video that Google will crawl new sites and determine the search ranking based on the relevance of the site content, not the age of the domain the site is on.
You can read the other three on Circle ID
I saw that exact video-that’s one reason we’ve been buying the “category Killers” in one of the new extensions. Thanks for posting this.
Always like hearing about best practices within the industry and believe #1 is the best answer possible.
As for the rest of the article, I felt as if it came off as too bias and a way of persuading businesses to make the switch.
A nice touch to the article was the video for anyone to understand domain age and ranking.
What’s curious and interesting to me is the following:
Coffee.club ranks on page 1 in Google US after one week for the phrase coffee club. I just checked the incognito mode again and they’re no. 10 from what I can see. Sure, they got a massive boost of backlinks, as any industry site linked to them when covering the USD 100K sale from Dot Club to Bill McClure.
But nowhere on the front page of coffee.club, not in the title, meta description, content or alt text you will find the phrase coffee club. While I’m nowhere to be the SEO champ, I can only conclude that Google sees coffee.club as two words.
Hello!
At a forum in Google was asked a similar question.
Google ignores gTLDs Domains! And this is a fact.
https://productforums.google.com/d/msg/webmasters/nm7AOCgm9xM/ZSv4wAy1FfAJ
Coffee.Club domain can be located on page 50.
It all depends on the country. United States, Britain, etc.
Yes! Google is a big idiot.
You need to check in incognito mode and Google US
Hello! (encrypted.google.com). In incognito mode sites are checked only the webmaster.
So it can not be considered as the correct version. This is for fools!
For example site that mentioned the link above. Does not exist in any version of the search.
Reference to the region of the country or the city can be for the local cafe. Not for the international business!
This is a completely pointless conversation.
Thanks.
Why is it pointless? You have a website which is in no way optimized for coffee club (only the domain name) and it ranked on page 1 for coffee club? You must admit that it’s a curious observation and shows that the new gTLDs can have some SEO value?
I explain it at http://blog.europeandomaincentre.com/google-reads-coffee-club-as-coffee-club/
1) go to incognito mode
2) Use this link to check Google US outside the US http://www.google.com/ncr
3) Search for coffee club
I can see that it dropped from bottom page 1 to page 2 by now.
P.S!
It was clear from the outset. I can admit that Google filters have a database-relevant words. They evaluate the importance of words!And the system is doing so that people paid for the words!
Currently, only Microsoft supports and will support new gTLDs Domains! I only recognize it…
Just imagine 100,000 new domains with relevant words! Therefore, the CEO is all blah, blah, blah.
Dozens of gTLDs domains does not exist on Google. Dozens of gTLDs websites do not exist in Google. And you’re talking about your coffee club.Enough already put this domain as an example.
Otherwise, it may seem a that it is advertising. That’s all.