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So there is the new domain extension .co which was released recently.

What do you think of using this domain for a website? Is the upside of getting a decent name outweighed by the negatives? I think the similarity to .com and .co.uk alongside the lack of public awareness of the extension would lead to a lot of people going to the .com/.co.uk domains of the same name.

What are you views on it?

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I don't know what the future has in store (what value would those domains have down the road), but right now, I think they are overpriced. –  JP19 Dec 30 '10 at 16:33
The prices might come down dramatically around July/August 2011 when many speculators won't renew the registration and let them drop. –  tucson Dec 30 '10 at 19:09
to clarify, the .co extension has been around for many years, as the TLD of Colombia. –  DisgruntledGoat Dec 31 '10 at 13:17
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closed as not constructive by John Conde Feb 15 '12 at 17:48


4 Answers

up vote 2 down vote accepted

GoDaddy and the Dot Co company are planning a SuperBowl ad. This gives the .CO extension a better chance to get awareness beyond the domainers' community (those who invest in domain names, but don't actually develop most of the domains into real sites).

On the other hand I think there is a "pavlovian" reflex (no disrespect intended) for the very large majority of Internet users to go to the .COM by default. And that might be very hard to change. It comes from 10/15 years of Internet marketing history.

I think it all boils down to two points (apart from the price of the domains obviously):

  1. will people remember your domain name?
  2. will they confuse it to the .COM?
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+1 for the second point there –  Piers Karsenbarg Dec 30 '10 at 23:24
In that domainers' community the speculation is that due to typos on the users end, the "m" will get left off when typing in a url for another site, which would bring traffic in that way. That's my understanding of what people are hoping for anyways. Most would confuse it with a .COM I would think. It'd be used more for those fishing for traffic (probably for non-legit purposes). If anything, a .com site should purchase the .co domain to redirect in case typos do occur. That's its only use in my opinion. –  SubTypical Jan 3 '11 at 18:26
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One issue you might run into is possibly people thinking it's a typo if they've never heard of .co

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Outside of what you mentioned regarding the getting the decent name, I don't think any domain name tld outweighs any other. Aside from .com that is.

My personal opinion.

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I think .co is very confusing. Avoid it for that reason alone. It really does look like a typo.

Many are just using .co to catch typo traffic and send legitimate users of a .com website to their website. If you're going to do that, prepare for a trademark lawsuit.

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