3 ms·

I'll add another reason: People will mistakenly go to <yourname>.com in droves, regardless of how easy it is to remember or how clever the domain/TLD split is.

by tomku 14y ago

I'll add another reason: People will mistakenly go to <yourname>.com in droves, regardless of how easy it is to remember or how clever the domain/TLD split is. Having a cute short url is trendy, but it doesn't mean you can avoid the .com if you actually want people to find your site reliably. I'll also add that visiting http://voo.st/ http://voo.st/ is giving a "Domain Available" page for me. Completely inexcusable that their error state is advertising for someone to buy your domain.

dasil003 14y ago
I think this problem is rapidly diminishing over time as people just google everything.
- tomku 14y ago
  It's still better to have the .com anyways, because then you aren't potentially competing on SEO with someone else with the same brand name and a "better" domain to use it with. Like it or not, .com domains are the de facto namespace for consumer-facing products and having the .com for your brand up for sale or already taken is just asking for problems.
  - freshhawk 14y ago
    Do you have any sources on SEO benefit to being a .com instead of a .net/.co.uk/.me? I know .edu's get a bump and I wouldn't be surprised if .com's did as well but I've never had that confirmed.
    - tomku 14y ago
      I don't know that there is one, I just meant "better" from a branding perspective. Interesting question though, I'd love to know if there was TLD-specific bumps.
      - freshhawk 14y ago
        Ah, gotcha. That's a branding advantage that disappears a little more every year as consumers get more internet savvy, but it's certainly still a factor.
    - nl 14y ago
      I know .edu's get a bump No they don't. While some insist that simply having a .edu domain, regardless of the site’s quality, content, and incoming links, will give you more weight with the major search engines, it’s just not true. Who says so? Matt Cutt, a top engineer at Google, in this video.[1][2] and Sadly this whole engagement is based on a faulty assumption: It is not the Edu-toplevel domain which gives universities such a high relevance in Google for their references but the backlink-structure of the domains themselves. Universities have the advantage that on one hand, in most cases they have had online representations for a long time (stanford.edu for example was registered 1985) and on the other hand they have lots of content which was and is linked voluntarily. This is a long time to (unconsciously) build a “great” backlink-structure in Google's point of view.[3] Hopefully that addresses your second point, too: I wouldn't be surprised if .com's did as well but I've never had that confirmed You should be astonished if they did. Having said that, some early naive autocomplete implementations in browser address bars bias .com over other extensions. I'm not sure anyone has ever measured the impact of this. [1] http://www.searchenginejournal.com/truth-about-edu-domains-registration-links-and-google-juice/6095/ http://www.searchenginejournal.com/truth-about-edu-domains-r... [2] The video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EE163OGjfo&feature=gv http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EE163OGjfo&feature=gv [3] http://www.sistrix.com/blog/751-the-.edu-domain-myth.html http://www.sistrix.com/blog/751-the-.edu-domain-myth.html
      - freshhawk 14y ago
        Interesting, I picked up some BS SEO tips along the way. Thanks for correcting me.
  - stickfigure 14y ago
    Ultimately it's a choice between: * Getting an inferior .com domain/brand * Getting a better brand with a wacky .com name ("getxyz.com") * Getting a better brand with an "exotic" extension * Spending a ton of money The exotic extension seemed the least sucky option at the time. I'm not sure that "voostapp.com" (or whatnot) is more easily found than "voo.st", it's still a trip to google. The big surprise (to me) is that NICs can fail so spectacularly. I really didn't expect this. It might have changed our decision a year ago... but we're pretty much stuck with it now.
  - bigiain 14y ago
    This is still true today, but has been becoming less and less true for years now. The .com namespace just isn't big enough. Today we're mostly just dealing with it - I suspect I'm somewhat more protected here in Australia than most US based people - many of my clients are fine with a $foo.com.au domain even if the $foo.com isn't available, so long as $foo.com isn't already a direct competitor. The pool of available .com domains just isn't going to support all the things people want to do with domain names in the short and medium term future. Something is going to have to change - and whatever that change is, it's somehow going to have to avoid the problem of all the .com domain owners immediately registering the .newtld version or fraudulently/incorrectly using trademark law to muscle out new businesses.

by tomku 14y ago

dasil003 14y ago

I think this problem is rapidly diminishing over time as people just google everything.

tomku 14y ago
It's still better to have the .com anyways, because then you aren't potentially competing on SEO with someone else with the same brand name and a "better" domain to use it with. Like it or not, .com domains are the de facto namespace for consumer-facing products and having the .com for your brand up for sale or already taken is just asking for problems.
- freshhawk 14y ago
  Do you have any sources on SEO benefit to being a .com instead of a .net/.co.uk/.me? I know .edu's get a bump and I wouldn't be surprised if .com's did as well but I've never had that confirmed.
  - tomku 14y ago
    I don't know that there is one, I just meant "better" from a branding perspective. Interesting question though, I'd love to know if there was TLD-specific bumps.
    - freshhawk 14y ago
      Ah, gotcha. That's a branding advantage that disappears a little more every year as consumers get more internet savvy, but it's certainly still a factor.
  - nl 14y ago
    I know .edu's get a bump No they don't. While some insist that simply having a .edu domain, regardless of the site’s quality, content, and incoming links, will give you more weight with the major search engines, it’s just not true. Who says so? Matt Cutt, a top engineer at Google, in this video.[1][2] and Sadly this whole engagement is based on a faulty assumption: It is not the Edu-toplevel domain which gives universities such a high relevance in Google for their references but the backlink-structure of the domains themselves. Universities have the advantage that on one hand, in most cases they have had online representations for a long time (stanford.edu for example was registered 1985) and on the other hand they have lots of content which was and is linked voluntarily. This is a long time to (unconsciously) build a “great” backlink-structure in Google's point of view.[3] Hopefully that addresses your second point, too: I wouldn't be surprised if .com's did as well but I've never had that confirmed You should be astonished if they did. Having said that, some early naive autocomplete implementations in browser address bars bias .com over other extensions. I'm not sure anyone has ever measured the impact of this. [1] http://www.searchenginejournal.com/truth-about-edu-domains-registration-links-and-google-juice/6095/ http://www.searchenginejournal.com/truth-about-edu-domains-r... [2] The video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EE163OGjfo&feature=gv http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EE163OGjfo&feature=gv [3] http://www.sistrix.com/blog/751-the-.edu-domain-myth.html http://www.sistrix.com/blog/751-the-.edu-domain-myth.html
    - freshhawk 14y ago
      Interesting, I picked up some BS SEO tips along the way. Thanks for correcting me.
- stickfigure 14y ago
  Ultimately it's a choice between: * Getting an inferior .com domain/brand * Getting a better brand with a wacky .com name ("getxyz.com") * Getting a better brand with an "exotic" extension * Spending a ton of money The exotic extension seemed the least sucky option at the time. I'm not sure that "voostapp.com" (or whatnot) is more easily found than "voo.st", it's still a trip to google. The big surprise (to me) is that NICs can fail so spectacularly. I really didn't expect this. It might have changed our decision a year ago... but we're pretty much stuck with it now.
- bigiain 14y ago
  This is still true today, but has been becoming less and less true for years now. The .com namespace just isn't big enough. Today we're mostly just dealing with it - I suspect I'm somewhat more protected here in Australia than most US based people - many of my clients are fine with a $foo.com.au domain even if the $foo.com isn't available, so long as $foo.com isn't already a direct competitor. The pool of available .com domains just isn't going to support all the things people want to do with domain names in the short and medium term future. Something is going to have to change - and whatever that change is, it's somehow going to have to avoid the problem of all the .com domain owners immediately registering the .newtld version or fraudulently/incorrectly using trademark law to muscle out new businesses.