Google Brushes Aside Misconceptions The search for finding better and better ways of boosting search engine rankings is always a never ending story for webmasters. The recent talk in town was that by acquiring high-profile domain names from ICANN you could increase your rankings. However, Google’s webspam guru Matt Cutts recently brushed aside all such rumors saying, “shouldn’t register a TLD in the mistaken belief that you’ll get some sort of boost in search engine rankings.”Matt’s statement came as a reply to CEO of ARI Registry Services Adrian Kinderis’ editorial via his Google+ page. It is not surprising to see a domain registry company’s CEO boasting about increasing search engine rankings by buying their self-branded or keyword gTLD. Of course, if webmasters fall for it, the registry company makes a fortune.

Some excerpts of Kinderis’ editorial were:

“Will a new TLD web address automatically be favoured by Google over a .com equivalent?” Quite simply, yes it will.”
“Will car.insurance rank higher than carinsurance.com (for example)? All the evidence suggests the answer is yes, provided that the .insurance namespace builds value and perhaps verification into its space to ensure it is a signpost for good, trusted and authoritative content.”
As a reply, Cutts remarked:
“Google will attempt to rank new TLDs appropriately, but I don’t expect a new TLD to get any kind of initial preference over .com and I wouldn’t bet on that happening in the long term either.”
“If you want to register an entirely new TLD for other reasons, that’s your choice, but you shouldn’t register a TLD in the mistaken belief that you’ll get some sort of boost in search engine rankings.”
Even though Cutts outrightly froze off Kinderis’ views, the latter believes that Cutts did not really understand what he was saying. Honestly, Kinderis arguments look a little vague which is probably why it did not receive much hype. If it was legitimate and sounded lucrative, why wouldn’t webmasters try the trick?
Google’s manager Jordyn Buchanan read Cutts’ clarification on the issue during ICANN’s open meeting in San Jose, Costa Rica, earlier this week. The statement clearly stated that no such changes in Google’s algorithm has been made, and that Kinderis’ statement was probably either just an assumption or an act to drive more people towards buying high-profile domain names.
If there is any truth in Kinderis’ remarks, even then webmasters should wait until the search engine lord Google approves it. Buying accurate domain names to get better rankings is already among webmasters’ priorities, and so leaping onto a completely different strategy can be damaging until it becomes a trend.
For now, probably Kinderis’ approach looks unpractical and out of the box. As Kinderis himself said, the only possibility for such a thing happening is if it catches momentum, which after Cutts’ clarification seems to be nowhere soon in the future. Probably, webmasters have to find another way of going through the block since this approach has failed before it even launched.