Are new TLDs good for SEO?
When we think to search for something, Google strikes in our mind as it is recognized and trusted by people than the other search engines. You might know Google ranks the websites domains such as .com, .org, .net and provides the best search results. With the fact that more and more new TLDs are coming every year and even a domain registration in India is picking up with more than 900+ Types Of Domain Extension That You Can Register In India (List of gTLD’s).
Table of Contents
What is gLTD?
gTLD is a short form of A ‘generic top-level domain’ that is one of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet.
A generic top-level domain (gTLD) is visible to Internet users as the suffix at the end of a domain name such as .audio, .band, .bid, .career, .credit, .deal, .social, .news, .video and even .bank domain names, .movie domain names.
John Mueller, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, has published the blog ‘how Google handles the new top-level domains (TLDs)’ on the Google Webmaster Central blog.
The clarifying post is published because of the questions, queries, and misconceptions Google has come across. The gist is: All TLDs will be treated equally in rankings.
FAQs Published by Google
How will new gTLDs affect search? Is Google changing the search algorithm to favor these TLDs? How important are they really in search?
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.
What about IDN TLDs such as .みんな? Can Googlebot crawl and index them, so that they can be used in search?
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.
Will .BRAND TLD be given any more or less weight than .com?
No. Those TLDs will be treated the same as 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.
How are the new region or city TLDs (like .london or .bayern) handled?
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. See our help center for more information on multi-regional and multilingual sites, and set geotargeting in Search Console where relevant.
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?
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. Again, see our help center for more information on multi-regional and multilingual sites.
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?
Google says they have extensive site move documentation in the Help Center. Even I tested moving one domain name to another domain name without losing SEO ranking.
Must Read!!
Are new TLDs worth it?
As per google, they 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.
Conclusion
TLD is an important part of your domain name as it might impact SEO. Hence, choosing the correct TLD is a very important task as it might seem overlooked or irrelevant to the local audience.
We hope this gives you more information on how the new top-level domains are handled. If you have any more questions, feel free to drop them here, or ask in our help forums.
Shashi kant Pandidhar
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