Google has released a new Webmaster Central Blog post regarding Generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs). The first question in their mini FAQ stuck out to me.
The first question on in this set is a bit of a bait and switch. “How will new gTLDs affect search?” Google doesn’t answer that at all. They don’t really know, and they aren’t going to speculate. The second question “Is Google changing the search algorithm to favor these TLDs?” Note in the image that I highlighted the word “favor”. This is what webmasters and inexperienced SEOs worry so much about. They are always super afraid that something new is going to happen and Google is going to like it better. Google isn’t going to “favor” new gTLDs because they can’t or people will spam the crap out of them. Google doesn’t really address this question properly because the question asks if Google will be “changing” which implies future action and Google responds with “our systems treat” which implies a current state. Then Google goes and throws in “Keywords in a TLD do not give any advantage or disadvantage in search.” What? Where did that come from? That’s not related to any of the questions they posted. Keyword-stuffed URLs are dealt with in the EMD part of the algo. Either a very low-level person wrote added this in, or there’s something going on here. Guess what I’ll be testing.
Let me ask you this; in all the years of gTLDs, when have you ever seen one in the search results? In my opinion, even with the best SEO, Google mostly considers gTLDs to be spam and junk. I’m going to try an idea I have with one of my gTLDs. I’ll let you know how it goes (unless it’s awesome, then it’s my little secret).
