Are .mobi mobile domains harder to rank?

I’ve been pondering for a while if .mobi domains or mobile websites are more difficult to rank highly than other domain extensions in pc-based web results due to the fact the whole point of .mobi is for mobile internet users. So many questions follow… With the extension only being a few years old there is also a trust factor to take into account as we all know that Google likes old domains. Surely though if someone is searching for mobile content then a .mobi with all things being equal should rank better than a .com? What about a mobile website on a sub-domain of a .com? Or another extension for that matter? Does Google take into account the dtd HTML data being XHTML for mobile e.g:

DTD XHTML Mobile 1.0//EN" "http://www.wapforum.org/DTD/xhtml-mobile10.dtd

If so what weighting does this have, if any, on search results? I have heard plenty of people say it is a lot harder to rank .mobi domains in pc-based search results because of age and non-relevancy due to it being a mobile extension which if people are searching on a pc they have no need for…

If I’m honest I don’t think it is any more difficult for .mobi domains to rank in pc based SERPs and in fact we are starting to get results with our adult mobile downloads site. Not to mention the success Tom had with animationfc.mobi ranking above Tottenham Hotspurs own .com site for certain keywords, which is great. So the proof is in the pudding, it can be done. Whether it is any harder I’m not so sure. However I am going to report back more on this, because it seems other people’s opinions on this subject are more bias toward mobile domains no doing aswell in the SERPs

Any comments would be appreciated, even more so if you have specific examples which I could share in my next post.

Thanks

Gary

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