Does domain have a huge role in SEO?

Hi everyone!
Currently I have a .xyz domain. I started my website not knowing anything about SEO. Recently I noticed that my website is not ranking for it's name (Gamblers Choice), instead a movie pops up.


I went to BHW and there one guy said that it is my domain .xyz and that google looks at this domain as spammy crap (in other words he said I am screwed).

I wanted to know from you guys is it true? Was .xyz selection was a terrible choice? And what should I do to rank my homepage for the name "Gamblers Choice"

Thanks!

I don't think the tld matters as much as the content, authority, and links for the domain itself.

I would suspect that it might take an .xyz a little longer than a .com to establish itself given the .xyz extension has a reputation for being inexpensive and frequently used by spammers.

Note that Google is a registrar (or has access to the registry) so you might be OK as long as your name doesn't match a prominent spammer :)

Finally, none of the above might matter at all. Your biggest battle may be convincing humans you are contacting for links, advertising, and collaborations that your .xyz is legit :)

It doesn't matter. But I see your domain has some spammy links (GSA links, comment spam etc), which I particularly think are the worst ones. I think you need to try to "compensate" somehow by adding valuable links to it.

This was the blog post and Q&A from google back in 2015 https://developers.google.com/search...-new-top-level

As others have said, it shouldn't impact SEO per se, however if you're targeting specific geos then there's an implication that country level TLDs like .co.uk etc help tell google that your site might be more relevant in that geo and in that respect might perform better (although they don't explicitly say that of course!)

Yeah I know, I messed up a bit with GSA and now I want to disavow all of the links. I had submitted .txt file to disavow tool with all the bad domains, but it has been around 3 weeks and no links have been removed. Maybe I did something wrong or do I just have to wait more?

Nobody knows how the disavow tool works, or if it works at all. Personally, I think Google has a pretty good system and detects an SEO attack or a spam campaign. I haven't used disavow.

I see. Sucks to be left in the dark.

with Google, especially lately, we're all in the dark :)

.Info, .XYZ, .tk etc., spammy domain extensions.

Your site is new. Register a .com, make a new logo and copy over the content to the new domain. Do not 301, or else all the bad signals will move over to your new baby.

Google says it doesn't but from personal experience it does somewhat as long as every other part of the site meets the guidlines in comparison to your competiton

In theory, if you had/have good enough content and structure, the fact it's on an xyz domain shouldn't matter.

It's probably not optimal (possibly for some of the reasons already stated) and, yes, if you were using some other tld you might be in a position of less doubt.

What may have happened here is the combination of the domain and the spammy links you sent to it (or perhaps the speed with which you sent those links after it went live) have hurt you.

But actually I don't think that's the case...

If I search 'gamblers choice' yes I get the movie site (imdb), and further down Rotten Tomatoes, and Wikipedia, and YT, and ebay

Why?

Because 'Gamblers Choice' is a real movie. 80 years old by the look of it, but real. It's an entity in its own right. So G is seeing highly likely user intent as being to find out about the movie. You are competing against sites where you have no chance, because their authority is way out of your league on that topic.

There are a few other gambling sites also high up, but at least one of those is called gamblerschoiceonline, and there could be n reasons why the algorithm thinks it and the others are more relevant than you. With enough time and effort, you could partially work out why they're there. It's a pretty pointless exercise though.

But...

If you search 'gamblerschoice' (no gap), you're there. Your Instagram is higher (unsurprisingly), but you are there (although quite a long way down). Which, to me, is good(ish) news. The fact you rank at all indicates you don't have some sort of penalty and those crap links probably aren't hurting you (at least not yet, and personally I doubt if they will, but that's just guesswork).

If you want to get ranked higher for 'gamblers choice' or 'gamblerschoice' you're probably going to need to build up some brand signals. If you can convince Google that you're a brand, and then somehow make it think that a searcher searching for 'gamblers choice' is looking for your website and not to read about the movie, then you have a chance. Evidence suggests that won't happen, although in theory you could go top 10 or 20 (right now I don't see you ranked anywhere).

Getting higher ranked for 'gamblerschoice' will be significantly easier. As I said, a few brand signals might be all it needs

Those brand signals will be desirable however you look at it, but really no one is ever going to search for 'gamblers choice' and actually be looking for a list of casinos to sign up with. So really there's little point in significant effort just to rank for it (but ofc it's nice to know you rank for your own name, and if you do rank there's an element of confirmation that the algorithm thinks you have some sort of brand presence).

All this suggests that all is not lost if you have to continue with the .xyz. But, to get anywhere remotely valuable with it, you'll need to build up some branding, get at least some fairly good quality links, and have very strong content and structure (I haven't looked at what you already have).

To be blunt, you're going to need all that even if you're on a .com. So, depending on how long the xyz has been up, changing now might not give you any measurable benefit.