Thad Ferguson writes:

What is the problem with .info domains

[Reply]

David Phillips writes:

Chris,

This is certainly helpful and I agree that our sites should aim to provide quality content to visitors. I guess by bringing our own unique “voice” to our content-building it provides the reader with a better, fresher and more valuable experience.
David

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Thad,

It’s pretty rare when a site with .info or .biz blows us away as being an authorative site, much less if they even disclose who owns the site.

At least your site has a generic info@ contact us email address. That’s more than we’d typically expect from a .info site. Please know this is not personal and our position on .info sites is purely from a generalization basis based on historical experience.

Also, read this:
http://chris.pirillo.com/2006/08/17/info-domains-are-dead/

[Reply]

Shan Ferguson writes:

I am not entirely sure what you mean by a .info site is that actually a domain? I have a dot com domain and the Articles I submit are about the content of my site so to me that is what I want is people going to my site knowing what bis in the content and wanting to view that content.

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

.info site is a TLD (Top Level Domain), no different than .com is a TLD.

Example: http://www.EzineArticles.info is a domain, that we permanently rewrite to: http://www.EzineArticles.com

[Reply]

Thad ferguson writes:

Ok Chris, perhaps I am missing something here but is this current blog sort of a pre warning on one of the ways the new levels is going to be graded, or is it that right now you guys have this grading system up and had I linked all of my articles to the .com aspects of my site instead of the .info I would somehow received more traffic from you guys are something else?

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Thad,

We’ve been not trusting .info domains since they came out. It’s not something new.

It’s not fair, I get that.

We do not have a formal grading system yet on quality. Today’s blog post was to provide some insight into our thought process on link quality.

If you had a .com domain, you would not get more traffic from us… but that depends on whether readers trust .info domains vs. .com or other domains.

The issue is about first impressions during the article review process by our editors. Everything either advances trust and confidence or lowers it. For us, .info domains in the resource box, lowers confidence…and this makes us slow down to review the submission with a more suspect eye.

[Reply]

Edward Weiss writes:

While I don’t use squeeze pages myself, as a marketer, I’m aware of their effectiveness .. especially when paired with Google Ads.

I don’t think article readers will be turned off if they have to give an email address to get the info they want.

Your thoughts?

[Reply]

Daria Perse writes:

This is all very useful info but I really don’t understsnd why would a .info domain be a problem.

[Reply]

Thad ferguson writes:

Nothing in life is fair I already understnad that, but I just wanted to make sure I wasnt being penalized for something that I can easily change simply by putting .com instead of .info.
My question is when it comes to the upgrading of levels will the 300 plus articles I have with .info links hurt my chances of making the upgrade and therefore should be switched to the .com links or is that something that would just be a waste of time for me and your staff and only improve my “trust” with you guys and nothing more.

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Edward,

We’ve been here before:
http://blog.EzineArticles.com/2006/12/content-done-better-landing-page-quality.html
http://blog.EzineArticles.com/2006/11/landing-page-quality-scoring.html

Yes squeeze pages can be effective and they are also barriers to confidence to some users who do not trust you yet to be an expert provider of information.

Doesn’t matter yet as we are not rejecting articles that link to only squeeze pages, but we do perceive squeeze page promoting articles as less valuable to our readers.

[Reply]

Thad ferguson writes:

I now know that since .info names where given away in the past and still can be bought for a dollar or less the first year that spammers and other non-serious webmasters buy these in groves.
Yes, good websites can exisit on .info’s but as a whole .info names are junk.
I wish I would have thought about that before deciding to make .info my main website portal (I did choose it because my site gives a variety of information on dating for men and thought .info would convey that more but now some 3 or 4 years later I know .com is KING period.

[Reply]

Lance Winslow writes:

You know I have one website which had a bulletin board that was hacked and then the Internet Search engine blocked it, we fixed the site about 15 minutes later, by taking off the forum that was hacked, but that was 8 months ago and the search engine still has the site blocked, so, I think blocked by search engines does not mean anything really these days. Of course I do not have any article byline links going to that website, but it is something to think about when a victim is labeled as a bad guy. So that is a thought, although I agree; How effective could a website be if it is blocked by major search engines?

[Reply]

Chinmay Chakravarty writes:

Dear Chris

I’m a novice in these matters. I don’t have a URL or website so far and I’m not sure what purpose it’d serve. What should be my ‘products and services’? How to go about it? Hope you can recommend something.

If I just go on writing articles as is my passion and the articles just go on beign read what’d finally happen or not happen? What is a page squeeze?

Sorry for the inconvenience that could be caused by this idiocy.

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Chinmay,

I took a look at your articles:
http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Chinmay_Chakravarty

And I don’t think you need to change anything.

A squeeze page is when you send traffic to a one page site that will only give the ‘secret’ or the ‘information prize’ (such as a free report) in exchange for the name and email address of the person wanting the goods. It’s called a “SQUEEZE” page because you are SQUEEZING and pressuring your site visitors to cough up private information in order to get something they want rather than just giving it to them. It’s a marketing technique.

[Reply]

Chinmay Chakravarty writes:

Thanks Chris.

I’m a little piqued. Do you mean that my articles are of no interest and so are ‘unmarketable’? I don’t need to change anything for now or forever?

Please give your opinion. And, some advice for a possible future course of action.

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Chinmay,

An ideal EzineArticles expert author to us is someone who has a profit motive behind why they are writing and submitting the articles they are doing.

Authors without a profit motive by the lack of a URL in the resource box are immediately suspect because typically they are writing for a different motivation that might cause friction (such as writing for political, religious, ego,‚  personal therapy, or any number of additional personal reasons).

Of course, we’re not always right in being suspect of non-profit-motive writers because a person could be writing hundreds of articles with the intent to gain personal name brand exposure (an indirect profit motive) with the intent to include a URL in all of his or her articles at a future time.

If you are a genuine expert in your niche and only write quality original articles that are exclusive to your name with an intent to provide significant unique value for others (readers of your articles)… you’ve got nothing to worry about.

I didn’t t want to get into a “why do you write articles” debate or discussion in this thread as we can save that for a future discussion. :)

[Reply]

Ray Foulkes writes:

What are quality points exactly? is it something that eZine keeps tabs on? How can we find out how any quality points we have earned so far? what are they used for?

[Reply]

Christopher M. Knight writes:

Ray,

It’s not a numeric point system.

I was being abstract in concept and concrete in my examples.

I used the words “POINTS” in this blog entry to mean that you GAIN or LOSE favor if you do THIS or THAT…as stated above. Hope that makes sense.

[Reply]