Google issues details on how new top level domain names affect search engine results. (In short, they don’t.)
Google has posted to its Webmaster Central Blog about how it handles new top level domain names in search. Because of the importance of this issue to the industry, I have republished the questions answered in the post along with my commentary.
Q: How will new gTLDs affect search? Is Google changing the search algorithm to favor these TLDs? How important are they really in search?
A: Overall, our systems treat new gTLDs like other gTLDs (like .com & .org). Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search.
DNW: This answer leaves a lot open. Google highlights the keywords searched that are in the domain name, and it will highlight the top level domain name if there’s a match. I think what Google is saying is that, as of right now, it doesn’t matter if “photography” is to the left or right of the dot in the domain name.
Q: What about IDN TLDs such as .みんな? Can Googlebot crawl and index them, so that they can be used in search?
A: Yes. These TLDs can be used the same as other TLDs (it’s easy to check with a query like [site:みんな]). Google treats the Punycode version of a hostname as being equivalent to the unencoded version, so you don’t need to redirect or canonicalize them separately. For the rest of the URL, remember to use UTF-8 for the path & query-string in the URL, when using non-ASCII characters.
DNW: I think this was fairly well known.
Q: Will a .BRAND TLD be given any more or less weight than a .com?
A: No. Those TLDs will be treated the same as a other gTLDs. They will require the same geotargeting settings and configuration, and they won’t have more weight or influence in the way we crawl, index, or rank URLs.
DNW: What will be more interesting to see on this issue in the future is how rankings of multiple SLDs under the same .brand TLD will work. Will it help companies to have a separate shop.brand and customerservice.brand domain name? Or will these not rank as highly as the existing .com or .de website?
Q: How are the new region or city TLDs (like .london or .bayern) handled?
A: Even if they look region-specific, we will treat them as gTLDs. This is consistent with our handling of regional TLDs like .eu and .asia. There may be exceptions at some point down the line, as we see how they’re used in practice.
DNW: This is a big deal for domains such as .London and .NYC. As of right now, Google is saying a .NYC domain name won’t give you a boost to searchers in New York. I suspect this will change over time, as it could improve the search experience.
Q: What about real ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) : will Google favor ccTLDs (like .uk, .ae, etc.) as a local domain for people searching in those countries?
A: By default, most ccTLDs (with exceptions) result in Google using these to geotarget the website; it tells us that the website is probably more relevant in the appropriate country.
DNW: This is well known.
Q: Will Google support my SEO efforts to move my domain from .com to a new TLD? How do I move my website without losing any search ranking or history?
A: We have extensive site move documentation in our Help Center. We treat these moves the same as any other site move. That said, domain changes can take time to be processed for search (and outside of search, users expect email addresses to remain valid over a longer period of time), so it’s generally best to choose a domain that will fit your long-term needs.
DNW: Google is admitting that it’s still really hard to switch a website’s domain name. This is particularly relevant to companies switching to a .brand domain. I’ve noted before that Google could give a huge boost to new top level domain names if it made the transition process easier.
Has Google ever explained how it handles anchor text that is the domain? For example, if I register pizza.london and people naturally link to me with the anchor text “pizza.london”, does that confer rank to me for the keyword “london”? I gather that anchor text is not that important any more if it looks spammy, but surely it still has some benefit. That might explain why some people claim to see SEO benefits.
I would think it has benefit. Take a look at the first results for “Domain Name News”. When the site was active, I’d often link to it with the anchor text “Domain Name News”.
This has been abused, and Google certainly tries to weed out those abuses, but it still seems to play a role. The text of the domain name must have some value as well.
It still does. Simply because people dont know how to link, so they tend to link with either busines name or domain. hence if you have descriptive domain name, you get multiple benefits without being in the least spammy. If your domain name just happens to be the exact match of the key word, they cant punish you and since everyone links by domain or name. You good to go. Hence just based on that city gtlds are valuable. It maybe not direct seo effect, but from studies it shows that it takes half the effort for site to rank up for same term as site with brand-able name. Anchor text is big culprit of that.
Yep, anchor text definitely has an impact, and having a keyword in the TLD will definitely lead to more anchor texts containing that keyword.
I think it’s important to point out that Google’s mandate for communications regarding SEO is not to help webmasters get high rankings, but to minimize attempts at manipulation that threaten their market share.
They’re not going to say “Wow guys, these new TLDs represent a really great way for you to combine the benefits of a brandable term left of the dot with a generic keyword right of the dot — it’s like the best of both worlds!”… even if that’s true.
This is pretty much exactly like their communications around keywords in domain names — Google insists they don’t help, when all the facts suggest otherwise: http://www.canirank.com/blog/keyword-domains/
It’s not lying because they’re speaking only about first-order effects: ie, inputs to the algorithm. “We treat new TLDs equally” is true, but “new TLDs don’t have any search engine benefits” is not true, because using a domain with a keyword in the new TLD will improve the keyword relevancy of your anchor text and impact user behaviors, amongst other factors that ARE in the algorithm.
I agree that what they want to happen isn’t always reality. If, however, certain TLDs gave some outsized advantage, I think it’s safe to say they’ll find a way to eliminate that advantage as quickly as they can.
Some advantages are so entrenched in their algorithm it’s difficult for them to eliminate them without causing massive problems elsewhere. Domains impact anchor text and user behavior, which are both pretty fundamental. What could they do — devalue anchor text if it matches a generic domain name? That would mess up results for all of the branded generics out there, like Amazon, Uber, Facebook, etc… So they rely on other signals instead: maybe devalue anchor texts if it matches a domain name, is a commercially-valuable keyword, and the domain doesn’t have enough brand signals to be a generic brand. That sounds awkward but machine learning classifiers can pick up on combinations like that easily. So that makes it more complex, but still easier than ranking without the keyword domain.
The main thing Google relies upon to suppress things that are tricky to do algorithmically is propaganda: make an example out of a few people, like banning MyBlogGuest or outing the biggest Private Blog Networks, have Matt Cutts proclaim that “guest blogging is dead”, “exact match domains no longer work”, etc.
About this:
“Q: How are the new region or city TLDs (like .london or .bayern) handled?
A: Even if they look region-specific, we will treat them as gTLDs. This is consistent with our handling of regional TLDs like .eu and .asia. There may be exceptions at some point down the line, as we see how they’re used in practice.”
Inevitably, .LONDON, .NYC, and the like will be used by developed sites to signal some relevance to London, New York City, etc. Google makes its money by delivering relevant material alongside paid ads. So, for Google, relevance is paramount.
Google may be waiting to see how these city and regional nTLDs are used. But “in practice” they’ll be used to signal that the entity behind the website is local or has ties to a region. So, of course, there will “be exceptions at some point down the line”. Google isn’t in the business of ignoring relevant signals.
These should be much easier to detect with city and regional nTLDs, since they’ll mirror ccTLDs – for which Google has a massive data set already.
Other nTLDs may prove to be very unreliable signals. .SPACE domains won’t necessarily be about outer space.