Are .com and .net domains best?

Well, that is all from a very anglosaxon point of view. ;-)

For Germany the .de Domains are working very, very well and are respected. If the blog is for example in German, I would always go with the .de domain. Of course, that makes little sense if your target audience are americans, australians, or worldwide.

However, not taking other domains because a lot of spam comes from thos tld-areas is non-sense. I think most of the spam still comes from .com.

By the way, .de is the tld with the second most registered domains, just to show that there is something beyond .com and .net.

Just because in some countries .com and .net are considered to be the “national” domains, that does not mean it is right. By the way, organization with .de is less complicated than with .com, .net and .org. Surprise, surprise, very little bureaucracy with the German tld, who would have thought that? (I was just moving with 3 domains because the provider was bankrupt: 2 .de-domains and 1 .org)

If you have enough $$$ get them all from .com to .xxx

I’ve always found .tv, .biz, .info to be rather tacky domain names (and .tk!)

I’ve found that I immediatly dislike a site thats not .com .net .org or .co.uk without even visiting it!

.com I associate with companies wanting money so personally I’ve always gone for .net for my main site and .org for my portfolio.

Unless you are Problogger (which can bear with a .net due the popularity) I would say always go for the .com no matter what.

I don’t mind other websites that are not .coms when I go to visit, but for myself I only look for .com domain names. I had a country specific one as my first domain because it was cheap and I had no money (this was years ago) and I have since dropped it because nobody could get it right anyway.

I’ve read a lot of times that search engines love dot coms.
I’m not sure whether this is correct but every time i search something in google, i notice that dot com websites usually rank better, even if the content is less relevant than that of websites with TLDs other than dot com. Dot coms rule!

.com’s are great, but as was noted it can be diffiecult to fine good names for the average person. Consulting with someone in the business may help you to find a good .com.

Someonw else mentioned that .com’s get type-in traffic, which is true, but not for all domain names, and mostly just short, popular ones, and many of those domains already have sites or those stupid parking pages on them(don’t click on the ads, it only encourages their use.).

So what happens when housing is short in a certain area? That’s right, prices and demand goes up, but also expansion into other areas. This is why I feel that getting a domain with another extension is not only much easier, it’s a smart investment. After .com, I think the .US domain will become the most popular as people realize it’s there. But almost any of the others including the “low rent” .info will provide you with the address you need.

Just try to get a good, short domain for your site and don’t worry so much about branding and SEO. Having a good site and good marketing will take care of the “branding”.

Now for some heresy:

Go for a national domain if you are writing for or about that nation, can get one and aren’t in the US. If you are writing for France from France, for example, I’m pretty sure you’ll get the ‘hairy eyeball’ if you are not using .fr.
Otherwise, go for a restricted domain (like .coop) if you are entitled to it.
Otherwise, go for a .com.

.com – the TLD of last resort.

I’m disgusted by the reports above of .org being classed as spam and an online bank not allowing .be – what broken broken software!

Changing the subject slightly, what do people think about hyphens?

I have a project with absolutely the best name, let’s say, Hanky Panky.
I own hankypanky.co.uk, but hankypanky.com is owned by a store specialising in large women’s clothing and .net, .org etc. are all taken.

Do people think it would be a good idea for me to use http://www.hanky-panky.com? Or is that no good?

I’ve been putting this off for a while, but it’s getting to the point where I need to make a decision. Please help.

I spent a month or more working on my domain name until I had one that I really liked and that I could find in .com. With the express purpose of getting .com.

My advice, spend the time gather all the words you like mix match, mashup, until you find a URL that works in .com. My perfect domain name was http://www.rivet.com, but it’s taken. (oddly enough by a rivet manufacturer, where does he get off).

http://www.techrivet.com was a close second.

dot-com is the best. Others are not as good as dot-com, but those (other than dot-com) are the same.

(1) Objective of a good domain name: Easy to remember the brand/product. So, how come you would like your readers/customers need to remember the .net or something? Just let them focus on “brand-name”.com…..

(2) People without tech knowledge will not remember .net/.org/.us/.ca/etc. as well. Even they don’t know what is “http://”, online bookmarking, web2.0, etc…. We, as a technician, need to consider for them (We are serving them:). Domain as simple as possible.

(3) Just typing “domain-name” in browser and press [ctrl]+[enter], it will go to http://www.domain-name.com. Good for lazy people (e.g. ClubEddy). Remember that lots of people are using old browser which does not provide .net shortcut.

However, there is an exception:

In Hong Kong, there is an actor called Ho Kwok Wing. He is an Australian working in Hong Kong for many years. To let HK people identify him as a popular Hong Kong actor. http://www.hokwokwing.hk is the best domain for him. At least, people will know that this guy with western face comes from HK!! Same as point (1): Branding is everything for a domain.

Another exception is that, non-profit organization should avoid .com. Because .com seems present a profit digging “company”. Using .ca or .net are okay.

Therefore, only use domain other then .com, EXCEPT only very specific purpose.

~Sorry for bad English~

I usually got with .com or .org, but my recent domain is .org, cause the other 2 TLDs were taken. I have had other .orgs and they still go found my Search Engien traffic so in reality it’s not a huge difference. I guess it depends what your goal is for your site. But like I said for search engine traffic it really doesn’t matter at all. As long as you get listed in the search engines for whatever keywords you are targeting, and people find it, then they will click the link and visit your site. I have over 20 domains, some long ass names and they get lots of search engine traffic. For branding your site it’s not as good,r but for search engine traffic it doesn’t matter one bit.

I say .com because it’s the only thing the masses remember.

You definitely want to have a .com. I would settle for nothing less. Also, if you can, keep all the words together like http://www.carboncopyprofits.com rather than a website with dashes ie. http://www.carbon-copy-profits.com

I have experimented with this on many sites and the first example always comes up first.

The same is true for http://www.dataentryreviews.com vs. http://www.data-entry-reviews.com. The 2nd website used to have a PR of 5 but the first one has beat it already.

So keep that in mind. I would spend at least an hour if not more brainstorming on your domain names. This is critical.

I would also check out Wordtracker.com

Good Luck,

Max

That’s interesting, about NOT using hyphens – I would have assumed they were better for SEO as search engines maybe could not distinguish between the words dataentryreviews, or whatever.

Hyphenated domains would be better human-readable too. What’s the thinking behind the non-hyphenated domain name?

.com is the king. I’ve registered .com tld for my main website