Google says keywords in the TLD part of your URL is ignored for ranking purposes

Google’s John Mueller confirmed yesterday in a Google Hangout that keyword rich TLDs, such as the new top-level-domains that have keywords in them like .LIVE, .NEWS, .ATTORNEY and so on, do not count for ranking purposes. John Mueller said Google completely ignores that for ranking purposes.

He said this at the 12:45 minute mark into the hangout. John said, “the TLD is not something we take into account there,” saying they “completely” ignore the words in the TLD portion of the URL.

There was some controversy the other week around a sponsored article published here named Can moving to a new TLD boost search rankings? That article showed how one lawyer switched from a .COM to a .ATTORNEY domain and saw a nice lift in organic traffic.

Both John Mueller and Gary Illyes from Google said this is not true and urged webmasters not to switch from their current TLDs to the new TLDs for “vague promises” of ranking boosts.

So now, we were able to get Google to go on record that they simply and “completely” ignore the words in the TLD portion of your domain. The TLD, top level domain, portion is what comes after the . in the URL, so for this site, the TLD is “.com”

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