Google’s John Mueller shared on Reddit that he’d choose a traditional TLD (like .com) even if it meant adding a hyphen to the domain, rather than using a lower-quality or cheaper TLD.
This came after a site owner said he chose a .xyz domain because the .com version of his brand name was taken and he wanted to avoid using hyphens. He mentioned that while Google uses abc.xyz for its Alphabet site, he’s run into issues where some platforms block .xyz URLs or people see them as spammy or AI-related.
In his detailed reply, John explained:
“”Personally, if I had to choose between a “traditional” TLD + a domain name with 1+ dashes, vs one of these often-problematic TLDs, I’d always go with the dashes (and better: pick a domain name for your brand that’s not already taken by others, where you don’t need “the-best-thingamabob” or typo domain names).””
This isn’t new advice. As John mentioned in his post, Google has long recommended avoiding low-quality or cheap TLDs. In the past, Google has even stopped supporting some TLDs entirely and has a whole podcast episode about TLDs.
Here’s John’s full response from the Reddit thread, in case it gets removed:
“”This will be interesting to answer without links (given the filters in this subreddit, hah). In general, domain names on TLDs are similar. But, … I’d avoid free / cheap / minimal-abuse-handling / mostly-spammy TLDs, since domains there can come with a significant burden to overcome before they’ve been recognized to be reasonable. If you’re starting out with something that you want to use for the long run, it’s worth making sure you’re not trying to build a serious business in an “everything goes” neighborhood. This is not new at all, and there’s no list from (afaik) any search engine, but there are some from services like Spamhaus or other security / spam organizations. Domain names on challenging TLDs might find that crawling & indexing is slower, even sitemaps may struggle to be considered worthwhile (you need to show that your site is not like the others in the neighborhood), emails & chat messages might get dropped, and that people will bulk-disavow or otherwise filter links from all domains on the TLD in an attempt to filter out spammy links. Personally, if I had to choose between a “traditional” TLD + a domain name with 1+ dashes, vs one of these often-problematic TLDs, I’d always go with the dashes (and better: pick a domain name for your brand that’s not already taken by others, where you don’t need “the-best-thingamabob” or typo domain names). The other thing I’d watch out for is that the domain name is actually on a TLD, and not a subdomain from someone else’s domain name.
Google for the pages below to read up more. Again, none of this is new.
* “Google: Don’t Pick Cheap Domain On TLDs Overrun With Spam” (SERoundtable)
* “Google: Don’t Choose Cheap TLDs, Avoid Spam Risks” (Search Engine Journal)
* “Google Wipes Out Any Site On CO CC” (SERoundtable)
* “The Perils of an .xyz Domain” (Spot Virtual)
* “Phish-Friendly Domain Registry “.top” Put on Notice” (Krebs on Security)
* “Reputation Statistics registrars & charts” (Spamhaus; eg, the ccTLDs associated with phishing)
Again, none of this is new. None of this is limited to SEO. But if spending $2 more will let you avoid a long struggle, I’d recommend spending the $2 more (or whatever the price difference between a good TLD and an iffy one is. I realize price sensitvity differs across the world, but your time will be worth more than the few dollars it takes to use a good TLD.) Are more-expensive TLDs always better? No – a lot of the broad usage depends on how abuse is taken care of by the registrar, which takes time & work, and registrars need to calculate that in. What about really-expensive TLDs? I don’t think you’d see any additional SEO value once you get past the “this TLD is generally ok” threshold.
Well, this got a bit longer than WebLinkr’s technically-correct “it depends” :-). I hope it’s useful and look at that, no links (I was going to set up a linktree with links, but thought that would be even weirder).””
Forum discussion at Reddit.
Update: Just to be clear:
