The .Tel Search Engine Factor

Will .tel be good for search? I have my doubts.

Checking in at forums and on comments at Reglike, it’s clear that a lot of people think .tel domain names could be a search engine gold mine. The premise is that the data on .tel domains is very structured, and Google can easily index it. Thus, if you get a good keyword.tel you can get traffic and include links to other web sites.

This is true. But people expecting Wikipedia-like saturation and rankings are missing a couple key points:

1. Google ranks your site in part by the number of links pointing to the domain. How many links do you think will point to any given .tel domain? There’s not much to link to. Compare that to a site like Wikipedia (or even Reglike). People link to its content all day.

2. Wikipedia has good content. Lots of rich, good, informative content. Most .tel domains will have perhaps 100 words.

But let’s assume for a second that you manage to get a .tel high in Google. The idea is that you can then send traffic to other sites listed on your .tel profile. Take a look at an example web site listing in .tel:

If I received a lot of traffic at my .tel domain, people will likely click on the links there. But they won’t pass on the kind of link love I’d like. The “anchor text” is just the domain name. I’d much rather have it read something like “Reglike”.

But all is not lost. I see one way .tel domain names could be used effectively in search, assuming search engines like the domain: personal rankings. Most people have few Google hits when someone searches for their name. It would make sense that your own .tel would rank fairly high. Online reputation management services could use these domains as another way to get “friendly” results near the top of search engines.

One other idea: Telnic strikes a deal with Google or Yahoo to include .tel domains at the top of the page for an exact keyword match.