: Does Google penalize sites on "commercial" country code domains such as .me or .tv? If I am thinking about using one of the 'fancy' top level domains such as .me or .tv should I be worried

@Pope3001725

I see this is an older post but I have a very current instance where I can see that a .us name ranks worse than a .com name. The .com name is surfacing on google page 1, based on a search term "moonshine still". One site is coming up on page 1 every time, even at a time when that site was down and for a long time it didn't have any content. My site, on the other hand; I have a .us name, and it hasn't come up any better than page 3 in all the years I've had it. I have current content, relevant text that should help my rank, and I still can't get any higher.

Why would a site be such high rank after many months of not having any content, while others would fall so far behind? The only thing I can figure out is the .us name so that is my answer. Get a .com name if at all possible.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Welton855

In short: no, Google does not penalize .me or .tv sites by default.

Google would generally treat .me and .tv domains the same as .com. They're all seen as generic TLDs (gTLDs), so they are not country-specific by default (technically, .me and .tv are ccTLDs, but since they're used so widely, Google treats them as gTLDs).

.co.uk is a bit different - it's a ccTLD, so it's country-specific. For those, it's possible that they are shown a bit higher in the local search results in the UK. However, you can achieve the same effect by using Google Webmaster Tools' geotargeting feature. More on that is at googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/03/working-with-multi-regional-websites.html.
For other search engines, it's probable that .me & .tv are also seen as gTLDs, but I'm not 100% certain (these things can change over time). Also, in general, unless you can specify geotargeting with them, they will use the server's location for geotargeting of gTLDs - so if you have a .com website hosted in the UK, it's probable that they will use that as a signal that you are trying to target the UK.

Vote Up Vote Down

@Kevin317

There are no penalties or preferences given for TLDs in google.com. All TLDs are treated equally in a google.com web search.

However, TLDs do affect your search results for country specific searches. For example, a .me or .tv domain will not rank as well as a .us website in a google.us web search. Also, a .co.uk site will rank better then a .us site in a google.co.uk search. This is because country specific searches give precedence to local websites.

So if you are targeting a specific country or region, try to use the TLD for that country or region. If not then the TLD does not make a difference.

Vote Up Vote Down