The .Info Domain Issue - Your Thoughts?

Within your domain portfolio, there might be a few .info domains. If that's the case, do you find that owning .info's (in relation to the success of your search engine optimization campaign) are positive, negative or that it's just downright not important?

From a SEO perspective .info domains are negative. Google tends to NOT rank these domains high on their results page when compared to a similar .com domain. Almost like .info domains have a slight penalty and appear "spammy" in the eyes of Google. Good SEO involves doing a doing a bunch of on and off page techniques just a little better than your competition so you rank higher on the Search Engine Result Pages. If your .info domain is going to give you a slight penalty you are already at a disadvantage. So it's just not worth it to use an .info domain for SEO purposes.

However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't purchase an .info domain. There are far more .info domains available than .com or any other TLD's. One strategy could be to purchase an .info domain because it's shorter and easier to remember and the .com is unavailable. Use this .info domain for branding, on a print ad, or the radio. When someone enters your .info domain into their web browsers address bar implement a 301 redirect to your main non .info domain that you are actively promoting and implementing SEO to.

So use an .info because a domain name you may like is available that isn't available with any other TLD's (like .com). But I would NOT recommending spending all your efforts implementing SEO on this domain b/c you may already be at a competitive disadvantage before you even begin your SEO campaign. The same may hold true for SEM (PPC), in that Google Adwords may not give a high quality score to a .info domain.  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

Following up on Dante's comments:

Chances are, there are some very attractive .infos available. For a minimal investment, it could be a good addition to your portfolio. Kind of like .edu, .org or .gov - I think that by signifying "information," when the consumer sees a .info it can add authority to a brand or resource. For a few bucks, not bad. And, it's an incumbent to .me.

Some final thoughts on .info domains...

In May of 2008 Google, for a brief period, removed almost all of the .info domains in their index. Although this was perceived to be a glitch, I find it hard to believe Google didn't do this knowingly.

Matt Cutt's, Google's head of web spam, himself has stated .info domains are more likely to be spam than any other domain extensions.

Domain resellers are selling domains for as little as $0.99 which would lead them to be the favorite of SE Spammers.

Afilias, who is the registrar in charge of the .info extension, successfully petitioned permission to confiscate .info domain names they consider abuse.

That being said I have discovered some .info sites that do rank well on Google:

for example spain.info ranks #2 on Google for the keyword "Spain" Google PageRank 7

But for the most part I'm unable to find any .info sites that rank well for competitive keywords.

So my recommendation is you go for a .com whenever possible. If not go with an .org or .net. But only go with a .biz or .info TLD if you are doing so for ease of use - Branding. NOT for trying to rank well on the Search Engine, particularly Google.