Sorry for the delay, I am a newbie and just noticed the response. The answer to both parts of your question is that search engines factor in TLD's in ranking, for instance .com's are often the most relevant when it comes to search, especially EMD's with an exact match, especially with Google. And day by day the search algorithms are changing, and search rankings lately are all over the place with algorithm updates. Many SEO leaders will support the argument that spammers dominate and the algorithms are struggling to get it right. Something I agree with. Now if you add another element to search algorithms it seems very likely that search ranking will only become more confused as data is added.