Thisday.ng over the last few weeks acquired Thisday.ng – the Nigeria internet domain structure that is poised to replace the .com.ng or its equivalents. The problem is that when you type Thisday.ng, it redirects you to Thisdaylive.com
Thisday has http://thisdayonline.com/ and is mirrored to http://www.thisdaylive.com/
At the end, having a .ng has not gone very popular, not just for Thisday, but for most other organizations. The problem has to do with Google algorithm. I think it incorporates domain suffix in determining its ranking. There is no scientific study from us here, but we are very sure that Tribune.com.ng will do better in digital footprints if it was in tribuneng.com. The reason is that when Google robots see .com, it is biased to think it is a U.S site. and the material has a better quality.
Again, no scientific evidence on this assessment, just an observation! How? We took exactly the same news from Tribune.com.ng and posted those contents in a .com website. After two days, the news ranked higher on the .com than the original source with .ng. Of course, the previous history of the new domain could play a role here. However, there is a qualitative correlation that Google robots favor .com over .ng. There is a website maintained by a Nigerian blogger that aggregates most Nigerian newspaper contents. While other newspapers hold their levels when you type a topic on Google, that site defeats Tribune.com.ng in the algorithm. For instance, Vanguardngr.com’s articles will prominently show as Vanguard on Google though there are some aggregations everywhere.
That said, go and get your .ng as we need a digital identity. Yet, we recommend that you have a mirror to your .com. This is very important if your business depends on hits. Guardian continues to use its .com. It has two mirrors and that helps it. Sun, Vanguard, Punch, etc and even Thisday – none wants to live inside .ng now. It is about the robots and what Google thinks on ranking.
Think about it, when you see a book written by one professor in U.S and another by one from Haiti, there is this tendency to think the U.S. one is more authoritative. The robots act that way except that the only way to know is that suffix of .com or .ng. So thisday.ng will continue to redirect to thisdaylive.com after paying the big bucks. You better not eclipse your business in .ng – at least now. Again, this matters if your business depends on hits and web traffics – if not, no need; .ng is Ok.
