I am new to this so this question may seem a little silly but how big of an influence does you're domain name play in getting listed by search engines? My site is optimized by keywords but the web site address that would fit very well with this is not available. I am thinking of using a non related domain name....is this a bad thing? Weill it make it harder to get listed by the search engines?
Also Instead of being able to get a .com we are thinking of going with a .net. As the site wil not be a .com will this make it harder to get listed?
I would appreiate any information on this topic
Thank you!

using a keyword rich domain name makes it easy to get descriptive inbound link text, but also helps encourage people to link to your site using a fixed set of link texts with low variety, which could eventually lead to tripping same anchor text filters in some search algorithms.

you can go either way on the domain name, but remember to mix your anchor text when you can control it.

but how big of an influence does you're domain name play in getting listed by search engines?

Not important at all. As long as there are some links pointing to your site from other sites, your domain should get listed with the search engines regardless of the domain name, and whether it's a .com or a .net.

Hope this helps!

I am new to this so this question may seem a little silly but how big of an influence does you're domain name play in getting listed by search engines?

First, let's sort out a vocabulary issue... "getting listed by search engines" is not the same as ranking well on them.

Not important at all. As long as there are some links pointing to your site from other sites, your domain should get listed with the search engines regardless of the domain name, and whether it's a .com or a .net.

I think Jill is being very literal and simply talking about getting included in the index... not necessarily about where you rank... and for that her answer is correct. Simply to "get listed," it doesn't matter what your domain name is, or what your tld is.

using a keyword rich domain name makes it easy to get descriptive inbound link text, but also helps encourage people to link to your site using a fixed set of link texts with low variety, which could eventually lead to tripping same anchor text filters in some search algorithms.

Assuming the question is really about ranking, I agree with what seobook says, but I would take it further. The engines weight anchor text in a link, but in my experience, domain name links are currently accounting for only about 20% of inbounds my client sites are getting, if even that much.

I think the most important factor is what your company name is. That's the default link text given by most directories and webmasters. So, if your company name is "American Widgets," and it's displayed prominently on your site, you're likely to get that as anchor text roughly 80% of the time, even if your domain name is amwidg.com. If the remaining 20% of your inbounds are domain links, these provide some of the variation that seobook is talking about.

Suppose your domain is "american-widgets.com," so the engines see a domain link as anchor text. In this hypothetical scenario, you've got "american widgets" in your inbound anchors roughly 100% of the time, maybe not enough variation to avoid some downgrading by the engines.

If your domain is "americanwidgets.com," not hyphenated, you've again got some variation in there.

I'm sure it's not quite this simplistic, but I'd argue that you might be better off without the traditionally often-seen-as-spammy hyphenated domain. I don't believe that the engines weigh the domain name, apart from its use in link anchor text, very much at all.

And, no matter what your domain name is, the tld (ie, .com, .net, etc) doesn't matter for ranking purposes.

Personally would say any benefit from the "spammy type" URLS is negligible. However purely from a user perspective, having a domain thats easier to remember from a user perspective can be just as important as finding one that may or may not achieve extra weighting from the search engines.

Something easy to remember could be just as effective via tranfer from word of mouth, than generating traffic via search engine optimisation imo.