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Does your domain name prevent your website from
getting high rankings?
The top level domain of your website can have an influence
on your website rankings. Last week, many websites with a
special top level domain were delisted from Google's search
results.
No more visitors from Google. What has happened?
Last week, many webmasters observed that
all of their websites with an .info domain name disappeared
from Google's search results.
Some websites removed traffic drops from several hundreds
of visitors per day to zero visitors per day. It seemed
that all websites that used the .info top level domain
had been removed from Google's index.
A few days later, the websites with the .info domains
reappeared in Google's search results.
Why did this happen?
It looks as if Google updated its filters for special
domain names and went a little too far. Earlier this year,
the head of Google's anti-spam team made the following statement:
"A top-level domain (TLD registry) will offer domains
for under $4. The result will be another TLD blighted
by spammy domain registrations."
Domain names with a .info ending have been available for
99 Cent for some time. It's likely that very many .info
domain names have been purchased for spamming purposes.
Google might have intended to block .info domains that
spam and a bug in the algorithm wiped all .info domains
from Google's results. Fortunately, Google's engineers
fixed the bug within days.
What does this mean for your website?
Filtering all .info domains just because many of them
are used for spamming is a very drastic measure. Although
Google doesn't do this, it's clear that there is some kind
of filter for these domains.
If you want to succeed with your online business, it might
be better to use a .com domain or the local top level domain
of your country instead of a .info domain.
In addition to your domain name, many more factors influence
the position of your website in Google's search results. Analyze
your website now to find out which elements of your website
can cause problems with Google.
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