If I am thinking about using one of the 'fancy' top level domains such as .me or .tv should I be worried about how Google treats such domains?Or to put it another way, if all other things are equal (good content, links etc.), will Google regard a .tv or .me as equal to a traditional .com or co.uk site?
Does Google penalize sites on commercial country code domains such as .me or .tv?
google;top level domains;country specific
There are no penalties or preferences given for TLDs in google.com. All TLDs are treated equally in a google.com web search. However, TLDs do affect your search results for country specific searches. For example, a .me or .tv domain will not rank as well as a .us website in a google.us web search. Also, a .co.uk site will rank better then a .us site in a google.co.uk search. This is because country specific searches give precedence to local websites. So if you are targeting a specific country or region, try to use the TLD for that country or region. If not then the TLD does not make a difference.