.co domains

domain names, .co, .com

[gravey1980]

Hi all

Does anyone have any insight into what the search engines will make of the .co domain names dues out this year?

Regards
gravey1980

[HuskyPup]

Typos are what most may be suggesting...Looks very nice on a url though:-)

I'll buy a specific few trade keywords when they're on normal prices.

[true_INFP]

Yep, the .co TLD will probably be a new typo-squatter heaven. It can't really compete with .com as far as pricing and real recognition are concerned.

[caribguy]

I've heard (a well known and long time) domainer suggest 10% of the .com Unfortunately, the gentleman did not back up his statement with many facts and contradicted himself.

widget.com is not worth 50M as a name alone, and if it were then indeed widget.co would be worth 5M, however its more like widget.com is worth 5M with no site, and widget.co is worth 500K to a corporate for profit domain user.

2.5M today for widget.com and 250K today for widget.co, widget.net

So, YMMV: seeing is believing...

[gravey1980]

Thanks guys.

I was just wondering whether it was worth putting much work into a .co or a buying a lesser .com or .co.uk.

Gravey1980

[Webwork]

Domain name gimmicks are just that = gimmicks. I never expect gimmicks to have a certain or long shelf life, but there's always a chance . . and it's there's a chance (untested) thinking that is, for most, the express lane to financial loss, not gain.

So, with .Co as with any other ventue there's almost always a risk-reward analysis involved. My advice is to risk a small amount on a few "good" .co domains and see how far you can run with the test.

The problem with diehard domainers is that they have far more domains than they know what to do with them, so they tend to opt for cheesey solutions - like automatic development systems or shoddy little mini-sites - few of which stand any real chance of leaping up in the SERPs and holding their ground.

Another problem with domaining thinking is to extrapolate from various (relatively few) .Com aftermarket successes to believing there will be new success stories with new ccTLDs or gTLDs. There's a certain lottery mentality and the ticket price isn't cheap.

So, my advice is IF YOU MUST then nibble, but don't get sucked into thinking you have found the easy path to fortune.

The internet highway is littered - piled high - with failed easy path to riches solutions.

To put this analysis into "precise context", the great love of the moment is "exact match" domains, but the moment people start talking up "how to exploit the algo" the algo gets a bit touchy and the love starts to wither and die.

Translated: I expect the love dial for "exact match" to be turned down, especially for non-relevant cc/gTLDs, i.e., "gimmicky domains" -> an Elbonian "exact match domain" used to target a USA market, especially if the domain lack other significant indicia of search relevance and ranking love.

[HuskyPup]

I was just wondering whether it was worth putting much work into a .co or a buying a lesser .com or .co.uk.

Are you going to build a real website or just park it and hope for it to increase in value?

If you're going to build a real site and your example.com/co.uk are not available or too expensive then there's no reason why it should not be successful if constructed correctly but that's another subject altogether.

[gravey1980]

Thanks for the advice webwork, you pretty told me everything I wanted to know. Cheers

Huskypup it would be a lead gen site I would be creating but I have got 3 other decent domains, (.com &.co.uk's) and the .co's I bought were really fantastic search terms, but from everything I've been reading, I'd be better putting the work into my decent .com's and .co.uk.

Seems to make sense, no quick fortune to be made eh?

[dailypress]

not sure what the return policy for the .co domains are but if you like you can purchase a few and test it for a few hours and then return them within the time period based on their return policy.

Ive never done it but read about it a while ago in one of the threads. I thought it was pretty clever for domainers

[martinibuster]

Returning to the topic of how the search engines will deal with .co, the dot co is a Colombian top level domain. You will have a difficult time trying to rank competitive phrases in the United States although you may do better in Colombia.

[HuskyPup]

You will have a difficult time trying to rank competitive phrases in the United States although you may do better in Colombia.

Agreed plus I'd find it difficult to compete against my well-established sites for the same products and with geo-targetting you'd never be totally sure just how successful you are with a new extension like this not only in the US but other countries too, however it could lead to a fantastic promotional name if example.com were already taken and used by a company in a totally non-related industry.

For instance my main keyword example.com/net/org are all taken by non-trade companies and I have contacted all three to purchase them with none of them even responding to offers therefore example.co and examples.co are definitely on my list.

It may be quite strange at trade promotional events though when people look at the name and possibly think "They forgotten the M!"