SEO effects on .Org and .Net names?

[MelissaB]

Hi all,

I'm planning on starting a site and since it's impossible to find any good .com names, I decided to look into getting a site with .net or .org TLD. I found a great site name (.com taken, of course, by a squatter) that consists of two keywords joined together (without a hyphen). It's a great name but it's not a .com.

So, how do search engines look at this name? Do they penalize it? Is it worth while developing a .net or .org site if you don't own a .com?

Thanks for any advice!!

Melissa

[aspen]

TLD doesn't matter for search engines.

The only issue is that it slightly hinders word of mouth because many people assume everything is a .com. You also get more typins with .com's.

[MelissaB]

Thanks aspen!

Well, I tried so many name combinations and I was unable to find anything even remotely interesting that ended with .com.

[Kailash Badu]

.com is not absolutely necessary. .net will do equally well from seo point of view. However, as aspen posted earlier, you might become victim of what they call typosquatting .