can a .net site rank higher than a .com site?

[Mike H]

I will try to make this quick. My dealership has a .net and a .com. We must carry a website from a specific company so we moved it to .net and put the content and host we want on .com. Now the company that provides our .net is trying to get us to drop the company that runs our .com and switch everything back to them. I told them the SEO with our .com is much better than can offer but if they get our .net site to rank higher in google search I would consider switching. Yesterday they told me that a .net site can never rank higher than a .com in organic search, is that true?

[Casey Y]

In an organic SEO search, they are probably correct. Of course, a .net can "rank" higher than .com.

However, we aren't talking about a million unique hits a month here, so the .net would have a hard time getting above the .com.

If Yahoo search brings up a .com and a .net option and everyone picks the .net option, then that will obviously jump past the .com over time within that engine.

[money]

Absolutely not true! .net, .org, .biz and even .info sites can rank higher than a .com if the seo done on it is not great.
I bet the company do not know what they are saying, i have personally rank all extension of the TLDs.

[Mary]

Yes... the domain extension doesn't really matter at all. There's nothing wrong with using .net, or .info, or .anythingelseinbetween.

I would probably avoid using a .xxx domain name though (unless you are actually running an adult content site).