Dot Co verse Dot Com

I only use .com, .net, and .org.. why? Because they are the easiest to rank in google organically. But some seo guru’s say that the .co will be another good choice and just as easy to rank. I myself have seen a .co on the first page ranking right along with other .com’s in the real estate niche.

So I have been contemplating on getting a few .co’s for some affiliate sites since all of the keyword rich .com’s are already taken. I came across a site that had a similar curiosity about .co’s and so they did a simple test. back in July 2011, they registered two domains:

• 27conversions.co
• 27conversions.com

They optimized the .co site as far as meta and h1 tag etc., while they left the .com untouched. Therefore if google had no preference, the slightly optimized .co site should outrank the un-optimized .com site. However five months later (today), I googled, “27 conversions” and the .com outranked the .co (even though the .co WAS optimized, and the .com was NOT).

So, although it’s not a very detailed test, it is an indication that the .com has more weight than the .co.

I’m thinking of doing a similar case study but using about 10 domain extensions, and see where they all fall. Wait… no I’m not. I’m freakin busy!!! lol.