iWeb Communities: Blog

 When launching a website, one of the first decisions you have to make is choosing the right domain name. Most of the time, many webmasters already have a name suitable to their website and their product, but most of them find that either the domain has already been snatched by a competitor, a domainer or domain parkers.

Now, the point of this article is not to advise you on how to find the right name, but more about choosing the right top level domain (TLD), which is either choosing for a .com or a .net, or finding a TLD such as .us, .ca, .fr.

A .com, .org or .edu domain provides:

• Legitimacy: most companies have their corporate websites under a .com domain; and when a user lands on a different TLD, many think that the owner of the website couldn’t afford to buy the .com domain,
• Better ranking in search engines: when confronted with 2 different websites with the same quality of content, search engines do rank the .com domain higher
• Better “findability” by your prospective customers: Due to the usage of .com domains, many tools such as auto-completions algorithms, web browsers, user interfaces, mail clients automatically assume that a website’s name would finish with a .com. In the same logic, users will try first to add a .com to the domain name if they’ve forgotten the TLD
• International expansion: it’s easier to get visitors and customers from different countries with .com domain name than if you had a .ca, a .de or any other TLD related to a geographic zone.

On the other hand, we’ve also seen many famous web services choosing exotic top level domains such as .fm (Federal States of Micronesia, used by last.fm for instance), .tv (Tuvalu, used by many media broadcasters), .tk etc. This is to be added to the millions of businesses who preferred to get the TLD of their country for their website instead of the .com, as they find it has its unique advantages:

• Recognition and belonging: a website can choose to market only its services to a country, and choosing the country’s TLD will convince prospective visitors that the website is dedicated to them
• Easier to own: it’s much easier and cheaper to find a ccTLD than a .com, as many domainers prefer to bet on .com domains
• An opportunity to play on words or brand their service, as with del.icio.us or last.fm

Of course, exotic TLDs do bring additional headaches. In Canada for instance, CIRA do bring an extra cumbersome layer for any activation or change of the website. In Europe, webmasters have to be nationals or be doing business in the country before operating in the TLD. And since registration and certification is done by a unique governmental agency, it inevitably brings up horror stories. Just two days ago, Ping.fm “disappeared” from the web. The .fm domain is a TLD assigned to the Federated States of Micronesia, which sold marketing rights for the domain to an american firm. Ping.fm’s problem was a problem with the .fm registry servers:

Keep in mind that some elements of this problem were out of their control and we both had to wait for the .FM vendors to turn around and make some headway on this problem. …

The web service is now back, but it does question the choice of an exotic TLD. So next time you want to make up a similar domain name, take into factor the risks and advantages.