Which ranks better, .mobi or .com ?

[Alain]

Hi Everybody,
Here's a question that I hear rising lately as more and more mobile platforms become available. What's better to invest in when looking at the searches via mobiles: .mobi sites or other regular TLDs?
Searching in a few forums I couldnt find any clear cut answer (some of the threads go back and end at 2009). I also know that dotMobi changed their policy and approach a few times to allow more freedom and use of .mobi domains.
From the short personal research I did comparing results between my comp and iPhone I couldnt find any significant differences or a bias toward .mobi sites results on my iPhone (as well as the other way around on my laptop).
As fat as I can see, good SEO determines which results will come up on top regardless of the machine. Still, I would like to hear more opinions. So, you're welcome to share from your experience and knowhow.

Best,

[alexpratt]

As far as I understand the .com's are ranking better and .mobi hasn't really worked.....however google may suddenly alter their algorithm like they are slowly doing with local tld's......I also hear with mobile sites a lot of it is on the bounce rate as people will naturally bounce out of a site that doesn't work on a mobile so key is to design it well so this doesn't happen

[freedom2play]

I seriously doubt that .mobi will suddenly (or even not suddenly) rule the mobile space. I does not make much sense from an algorithmic standpoint. In other words, why would they treat the TDL so radically differently between the 2 spaces?

[johnbenjamin]

Neither have I found any big difference between tld and .mobi

From the looks of it, I suppose it's more to do from a human perspective at this point where a mention of .mobi site translates to a mobile site. Likewise, something such as m.domain.com

I also hear with mobile sites a lot of it is on the bounce rate as people will naturally bounce out of a site that doesn't work on a mobile so key is to design it well so this doesn't happen

Bounce rate is perhaps the most critical factor here and from my view the page views as well. It's one thing to make your site mobile friendly. if the subsequent pages don't load correctly using the optimal bandwidth it's a lost cause.

From an affiliate/commercial perspective, I think this is where the competition heats up given the fact that unlike desktop sites you can't have too many offers and in the same note the offer available on a mobile version of a site needs to stay consistent within the mobile/smartphone context.

[fernades]

.com that is for sure. No doubt in that.

[graham]

I can't even think of a site running on a .mobi

[casinoplanet]

I have several mobile websites and some are .com and some .mobi. I don't see a difference in rankings, but I wouldn't recommend a .mobi if you have plans to use it for a regular website as well.

I wouldn't be suprised if Google on a given moment decides to adjust their algorithm to check several aspects of a mobile domain, like mobile friendlyness and mark up (which they should have done a long time ago imho).