Do you believe TLD distribution effects rankings in Google?
-
I have noticed that when looking at TLD distribution of backlinks for many websites that have grown organically, the TLD distribution is somewhat consistent depending on the style of website (I am using MajesticSEO to find this distribution data). Do you feel deviating from this TLD distribution depending on the style of website you have would cause negative effects with Google? Has there been any testing of this that you know of that you can point me to (ex: building all backlinks from .info TLDs and seeing if you rank well for given keywords)? I ask because my companies website has seen some big deviations from this and although I don't see any negative effects currently I want to make sure we create a site that stays consistent with what Google is looking for.
For example, if I look at news sites such as New York Times and Los Angeles Times, I see TLD distributions as such:
nytimes.com
.com = 59%
.gov = 14%
.org = 12%
.uk = 2%
.edu = 2%latimes.com
.com = 59%
.org = 13%
.gov = 11%
.edu = 4%
.net = 2%
.uk = 2%From that, if you are a news site, my assumption would be to try to stay consistent with around 55-65% of your links coming from .com domains, around 9-15% from .org, etc etc .
Now, looking at large blog styles sites I see this distribution:
naturalnews.com
.com = 70%
.org = 11%
.edu = 3%
.net = 2%
.gov = 1%techcrunch.com
.com = 71%
.org = 10%
.edu = 4%
.net = 3%
.gov = 1%Any input or links to tests of this would be much appreciated.
-
My pleasure. While I'm still thinking about backlink profiles, there's a post by John Doherty about analyzing your backlink profile vs. competitors based upon Domain Authority. I think this is a more worthwhile way to analyze your own backlink profile for spam. I won't speculate if Google is doing anything similar.
You can find the article here: http://www.johnfdoherty.com/three-phenomenal-excel-spreadsheets-for-link-analysis/
Also read this follow up post about what a bad backlink DA profile will look like: http://www.johnfdoherty.com/paid-links-backlink-profile-visualized/
-
Thank you for taking the time to respond. Your response seems consistent to what I would have concluded. We'll see if anyone is able to chime in with any links to testing that was done in regards to this question.
-
Good question and good answers, I would like to add, that I dont think that any one thing will get you flaged, as it is posible that something in a story about africa may be funny or important to China and may go viral, but mixed with other suss signals it well could be a reason to flag
-
I agree. I would argue that tld distribution is partly determined by link sources (i.e. what country the page is located in) and the targeted pages language/country. So a strong deviation from that will probably red flag a domain. Exampel: a page hosted in Germany, about Africa recieving tons of links from china might be fishy. A page in Poland about Germany getting links from Poland (or Germany) might be totally relevant, but with differently tld distribution.
EDIT: So the best rule of thumb is to ask yourself "If a human QA rep would look at the page and it's links, what would he think?"
-
I don't believe that it directly affects rankings, but it's certainly a reasonable method to red flag a domain for unnatural looking link profiles. It would also be natural to compare them to similar sites as you pointed out. News vs News, Gov vs Gov, Video site vs Video site, etc.
"From that, if you are a news site, my assumption would be to try to stay consistent with around 55-65% of your links coming from .com domains, around 9-15% from .org, etc etc ."
No way - I'd attempt to build all of the quality links I could - to hell with what's 'typical', doing what's typical will only get you typical results. You have to outperform to rank better, and trying to stay within a natural profile as determined by your competitors' efforts is not what makes you shine.
So, I definitely don't think going outside the typical profile would automatically have a negative affect, but I definitely think accumulating an extreme number of .info links looks spammy, and if I ran a search engine it would definitely be one method I would use for red flagging sites for manual reviews. Going outside the natural link profile might get you looked at by the webspam team, if they ever get around to it, but if you're playing by their link quality rules I don't think you need to worry. Eventually the TLD landscape is going to change from where it is now, and Google is fully aware of that and unlikely to punish you unless the links suck.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Drop in Rankings After Removing Links
So I removed some links to a particular homepage for one of the sites we own, this page had A LOT of links pointing to it using exact match anchors. And for the most part the links were coming from low quality pages/content. After removing a good chunk of them I noticed are rankings went down from around 8-9th two weeks ago to 21 as of today. Has anyone else had a problem like this before? I'm thinking about restoring some of these links now to see if I can recover some of that. Any thoughts on doing this? Thanks
Link Building | | ThridHour0 -
Why did my rank drop?
I was thrilled that my new blog catapulted up to spot # 5 on google last week for a great keyword. I worked hard on creating internal links to my category page as well as improving my content and getting a couple good external follow backlinks. But today, the report says I dropped off the top 50 list. How can I find some insight as to why this happened??
Link Building | | dealblogger0 -
Google ranking penalty
Do you think that our websites involvement with LinkMonster.com link building program is the cause of our penalty by google in our ranking ?
Link Building | | websitedzyn0 -
Google Merchant Center
Does anyone have experience with outcomes on listing your products under grouped search results as opposed to separated out. It seems that this can be easily accomplished by using a SKU that is different then others in the listing but I wonder if one ranks better over the other (it appears that grouped searched rank a bit higher). It seems that it would be best to take into consideration the audience you are targeting and what their habits are, i.e. would they be more likely to click on the group searches and look for products that way or do they want to find a reputable brand and would more likely click on that. Any help or thoughts would be appreciated as I am not really finding any information on this subject.
Link Building | | DragonSearch0 -
Do Expired Domain Retain Their Page Rank ?
I am a little bit confused about buying expired Domain Names because i have got mixed advice over the internet. Some Say That They Lose Their Page Rank And Some Say That They Don't. So I would really love to hear what PRO Members have to say about it! Also is it a Good Idea to use Expired Domain names for Link Building ? Rishi
Link Building | | RishiSeo0 -
Adding to intl versions of Google?
I ran the SEOmoz Competitive Link Finder tool for my URL and 5 of my competitors. The #1 result (where 3 of my competitors are listed but I'm not) is google.com.sg. Here's the URL where they are listed: http://www.google.com.sg/alpha/Top/Business/Investing/Derivatives/Options/Research_and_Analysis/ All 5 of us are US-based companies. Why would 3 of them be listed in the Singapore version of Google but not me? Is it common practice to add your URL to all local versions of Google, or should submission to the main google.com be enough?
Link Building | | scanlin0 -
Website dissapeared out of Google
Hi Everyone, About 2 months ago i launched a website called http://spelenroulette.nl, i did some linkbuilding for this website in the meantime with other roulette/gaming related websites and the website got a bit up in Google. But when i was checking my rankings today the frontpage of this website doesn't show up on the first 80 pages? Only some subpages are still on the same positions. Could this be for a rank-update like these happens all the time and your site dissapears from Google for several days, or could this be because of wrong/too many backlinks or something completely different? Regards, Yannick
Link Building | | iwebdevnl0 -
Natural Link Profile - Ranking Signal?
Hi, Is a natural link profile a ranking signal? What is the value in a natural link profile? What is a (natural?) link graph? Is Majestic SEO the only company capable of visualizing a link graph? (I know the answers to these questions but I want to hear what SEOMoz has to say in the quasi-official standards of SEOMoz Q/A) Regards,
Link Building | | qlkasdjfw0