both play part, but no-one really knows how much… just as well as hosting the site in the country of your destination supposedly helps – but its difficult to prove.
but just to give you an idea of just how beneficial the domain name and the extension can be, i suggest a little exercise:
– go to google.de and search for casino
– take top 4 sites and try to look up the links in yahoo
– see what i mean?
the domain casino.dot.de has far far far less links then any other site out there (just under 1,5k) – wouldnt it suggest the domain name and extension plays a big part?
notice how many links the only domain in top 4 without the keyword “casino” in the actual URL needs to be ranked well – i get over 230k links.
any more doubts?