Domain Names

[The New Guy]

How important is the extension on the end of a Domain Name? Say a dot com vs a dot biz name? While dot com names are King, I think the extenstions of, .us, .info, .biz, names are becoming more and more accepted. I believe in todays age, you Must have a Web presence in this business. With all the good .com names being taken, and thousands of great names available in .us, .info, .biz, extensions, I think that makes them look like a good alternative.

 

[Guest]

How important is the extension on the end of a Domain Name? Say a dot com vs a dot biz name? While dot com names are King, I think the extenstions of, .us, .info, .biz, names are becoming more and more accepted. I believe in todays age, you Must have a Web presence in this business. With all the good .com names being taken, and thousands of great names available in .us, .info, .biz, extensions, I think that makes them look like a good alternative.

Sorry, but I disagree. I won't go into detail because it won't matter. Bottom line my advice is to stay with either .com or .net. When you see cocacola.biz or ibm.us or bluecross.info then you can take another look-see at this. Until then, you will just shoot yourself in the foot (or higher up) if you stray from the .com or .net. TLDs (which stands for 'top level domains' ... and that's more than you need to know or should care about.)

Al

 

[senior-advisor-indiana]

Do you have anything to back your opinion up Al?

 

[Guest]

Do you have anything to back your opinion up Al?

In all of my Internet wanderings and perusals of Web 2.0 literature, I've yet to run into any creditible marketing expert that advises the use of anything other than a .com or .net. TLD.

But to be honest, the opinion comes from my 'gut.' Show me one, just one, highly successful business, service, agency, or product that is not .com or .net. You know who has these TLDs? They are mom/pop outfits, usually selling something like doll clothes or jewlery, that have been 'sold' some kind of 'turnkey' internet marketing package by some so-called "Internet" expert.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. YMMV.

Al

 

[Alsky]

I definitely agree... if I see anything other than a .com, the first impression I get is not a good one. Plus, it makes you look like a Johnny come Lately. Be inventive, you can still come up with an innovative name, maybe your own name, or initials of your company name and make sure you use .com Almost all internet users who need to type in a name to search a site automatically type in .com This is a fact!

Come on, what does Yahoo, or Amazon or Ebay have to do with anything until these companies branded these names to mean something.

Marketing experts all unnamiously agree, .net is ok but is a far 2nd to .com and ions ahead of any other .whatever.

I use godaddy.com for most of my internet names, plus they can host your site for a very nominal fee. They also will give you free a one page site if you do not mind their logo at the bottom.

One other piece of advice, use the .net, .us, .info and etc as mirror sites. In other words, use these secondary sites as a splash page that leads to your main site... this will give you more exposure with the search engines and if you optimize these sites properly, will return huge amounts of traffic and therefore exposure to your main website.

Hope this helps. Good Luck.

Al

 

[somarco]

Have to concur on the .com extensions. Stay away from the others.

I have one domain that is a .net, everything else is .com.

I get a few hits on the net, but more come on the com domains.

Also, get away from using email addresses with AOL, Yahoo, Gmail, etc for correspondence. You want to brand yourself, or your company.

I have been working on branding my name for some time now & it is working. Somarco is an acronym for my agency, but that was taken. Even still, somarco is a screen name I use on public forums but for business communication I use my real name. I want people to look at me as a person, not just a business entity. That is why I secured my name as a dot com and all my email correspondence is directed to and responded from my name.

http://bobvineyard.com

 

[Crabcake Johnny]

Second the motion. It's .com or keep searching for another domain name until you find a .com available.

 

[Sam]

It really depends on how much you are going to market your website and what the ultimate purpose of it is. If you will be using the website for PPC marketing with ads on the search engines, then the extension matters less, because they are coming from a direct link. Likewise, if you will include a link in your email signature or when you send quotes or newsletters electronically, then you don't need to worry about losing users who will come with direct navigation.

However, if you want to put your website on your business card, or to do any sort of offline marketing, then it is really much more important to have a .com name because you will lose potential prospects with other extensions, either because they are unimpressed with it, or because they type in the wrong one and either get distracted or frustrated.

There is no doubt that we lose some visitors every day because our forum is on a .net. We have it that way because we really needed the keywords in the url for SEO purposes and because some of us were basically moving from the .com. I tried to buy the domain from the owners and they started telling me about how they recently sold a different domain name for $100,000. Needless to say, we walked away and took the .net

If anyone is curious about how much domain names can actually sell for, you can look at the ytd sales charts at http://www.dnjournal.com/ytd-sales-charts.htm

 

[somarco]

Gosh, Sam. I am really disappointed to see that porn.com is taken . . .

I was hoping to drive new traffic to my site.

 

[Newby]

I agree with everyone that .com is the only way to go. When I type an address in I don't even type the www or the .com part. I just type the middle and hit the control key and enter. That automatically fills in the .com and I think a lot of other people do it that way too.