Is .info grappling back its credibility?

Long the domain of spammers, scrapers and splogs, the .info domain has suffered at the hands of less reputable websites. But is that on the change?

Surfers take the domain less seriously, and there has been much talk about the search engines thinking similarly, de-ranking .info domains when returning search results on the premise that it is likely content created by spammers. This may not be an entirely accurate assumption, however, as the search engine analysis of web page content is continually increasing in sophistication, this de-ranking may be wholly explained by correct targeting of low quality content.

Regardless of the search engines’ relationship with the .info, it seems amongst web users that it is considered less important than .com or even .net. Whether this is down to the spread of spam content using this domain cannot be determined.

The .info turnaround

In recent times, however, .info may be starting to regain its credibility. Countries are beginning to use it – quite accurately – for their tourism or information sites (see spain.info as an example). With very high quality, authoritative and relevant content, these sites are proving that the .info domain can be more valuable than we think, and this will inevitably have an impact one way or another on the search engines. The more .info sites we create with high quality content, the more everyone begins to take it seriously.

For those searching for domain names, the .info extension provides some real bargain basement opportunities right now. Many registrars offer significant discounts on .info (right now, GoDaddy, for example, will charge you just $0.99/¬£0.50 for the first year’s domain registration). Sadly, such bargains also attract the spammers, so .info is not as yet out of the water.

Still, when the .com and .net have already been taken, .info may soon once more be a viable option.

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