.Info Domains Are Different
May 26, 2008 By: Justin | 4 commentsAnyone who’s been following Vic over at BloggerUnleashed knows that he supported buying 100 .info domains to launch 100 BANS sites. Many people have been launching many info domains and some worried about their .info sites being treated differently by Google. Justin, from BloggingZombie, made a post saying that info domains “>will not have a problem with Google if they are legitimate sites”. So with recent events I thought I’d share my views on the subject.
I’ve been doing a lot of studying recently and trying to learn as much SEO as possible. During that time I’ve seen two videos from Matt Cutts talking about .infos and spam. In one video, he says that there are not many legitimate .info sites (we’re talking percent wise vs .com). If you find a .info site, there is a greater chance that it will be spam. I think that Google does treat .info’s differently. And recently there has been plenty of proof. The second video I mentioned was a video where Matt talks about annoying spammers as a tactic to stop spam. The idea is to make it difficult and to cost them time and money. The less efficient their spam, the quicker they’ll move on to exploiting some other system. This is what I think Google is doing with .info domains.
Many people over at BloggerUnleashed have had issues with their info domains getting and staying indexed. This is a prime example of how Google is treating these domains different. The fact is, even if the site is legit, a .info site will need to prove itself a little more before Google will index it. The reason this is happening is because GoDaddy was selling info domains at 99 cents. Spammers across the internet were buying and launching sites in the numbers of hundreds and thousands. Google needed to adjust and I believe the end result was a change in their algorithm.
Info Domains Get Deindexed
On May 23rd reports of info domains getting deindexed filled forums. These stayed deindexed for a couple of days and now things seem back to normal. I think this “glich” is a good indicator that Google made some changes in relation to .info domains. This may make the future of .info domains grim.
I think the net effect is that .info sites will be harder to get index and to get ranked. Not that they won’t rank eventually, but they may require more effort up front and you’ll need to prove yourself as a legit site. If you don’t agree, check out this quote by Matt Cutts:
Matt Cutts View
“A top-level domain (TLD registry) will offer domains for under $4. The result will be another TLD blighted by spammy domain registrations” -Matt Cutts, My 2008 Predictions
Blight - “Something that impairs growth, withers hopes and ambitions, or impedes progress and prosperity”
What Do I Think?
I think that quote is exactly what we are seeing.
There is a very good chance you’ll have a harder time being successful with .info domains. This doesn’t mean they won’t do well in the long term, but your progress will be hindered upfront (especially while Google is trying to deal with thousands of info domains coming live over the past month).
My advice: If you have the money, get a .com domain. If you’re short on cash, the .info should be ok but you’ll need patience. Don’t get discouraged if you take a long time to get indexed. Its just the result of Google trying to stop spammers (which is good for you if you have a legit site). BANS in particular has had a difficult time getting indexed and ranked while using .info domains. April from Daily Dosh has been installing blogger blogs onto her .info domains in order to get .info BANS indexed. By adding a blog, you can easily add unique content to your .info BANS. I even created a Dateless Sniper BANS template to work along side Court’s Dateless Sniper Wordpress theme.
Filed Under Bloggers, Online Success, SEO, Search Engines |
Tagged With Domains, Google, Online Success, SEO
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Sorry to tell you but your .info bans sites are gone for good. Move on and build your remaining .info’s as phpbay sites or adsense sites. Google will not reindex the sites, they are banned. I’ve seen this many times before with .info domains and certain other scripts that were abused.
The problem with .99 cent domains goes back years. Godaddy has had .99 sales several times over the last couple of years. Hell i bought thousands of .info domains from RegisterFly when they sold them for .69 cents a couple of years.
The problem was you had hundreds of people buying 100+ domains and throwing up BANS sites. Google considers BANS sites as thin affiliate sites, basically just copies of ebay with very little or no added useful content. Think about it why would they want to fill their search engine with tens of thousands of such sites.
You can continue working on you .info BANS if you want but I think its a total waste of time.
I wouldn’t consider them a complete was of time. I have a few BANS up that make a little money. I never rushed in and did the 100 .info domains. I think 100 info domains on the same ip will raise a flag, but 3 to 5 (which I have) isn’t that significant.
(its smart to not jump on the bandwagon imo)
It also depends on the quality of the site. I have BANS that include toplists and guides on pages in addition to the product pages. They rank fine and make a little cash.
I also build links for them a little differently than many from BU. Articles, directories, and BMD runs are low quality links. Many people only do those and expect to get index.
BANS is just a script, just like Wordpress. Its how you use it that matters. If you build a thin site with cheap links on a info domain, than I agree that is a complete waste of time.
Build a bans, makes some content pages, maybe add a blog, and create a fair design. It’ll index and rank as long as you get real links.
.info domains make good landing pages for certain campaigns but i would hesitate to use them for a site that needs to be ranked.
what i’m worried about is that .us is the next domain cutts is talking about. that would suck because i have several .us domains. but there are many of them available and godaddy could decide any day to sell them for a buck each…
Yeah, if godaddy does a similar sale on .us domains, we could see the same thing. I’ve ranked well with .infos, but they seem to have a higher bar to pass than an equivalent .com