Not sure if everyone has heard, but the next big domain extension to be launched will be the .co later this year. It's the ccTLD for Columbia, but is being touted as a company related domain based on peoples use of Co as short for Company or Corporation. Restrictions on registration have all but been removed to allow anyone in the world to easily register.
This is similar to how the .Me extenion was launched a couple of years back. .Me is the ccTLD for Montenegro but was market as an extension allowing personalisation more than anything else.
Both instances show fairly innovative ways to promote and sell domain names.
However, my question is related to the impact on search of such domain names.
We know (or can at least see) that ccTLDs are used by Google as a guide to where you are based, leading to .co.uks generally doing better in the UK, .de domains doing better in Germany, .fr domains doing better in France and so on. It also still more than possible for generics such as com, net and org to rank well in any country given the correct effort.
Does anyone know therefor how extensions such as .me and .Co would be dealt with by Google for this purpose? For instance, if I were a UK based startup company and liked the idea of a .Co as the extension for my new website, what are my chances of ranking well in Google UK for my chosen terms in the future? In my mind, I could put in the same effort as the next person on an SEO campaign, but would still be hugely hindered by Google thinking I'm based in Columbia - which might not be relevant at all to my business. While "the next person" is doing much better because they have a gTLD or a relevant ccTLD.
Is it corrrect that a domain such as .Co can be marketed as worldwide extension to promote companies, when in fact what could actually happen is that we simply witness a much wider variety of companies appearing in Google Columbia, with no impact in any other Country Specific Googles?
This is a wide open question. Really just looking for peoples views on this as we head towards the launch of yet another ccTLD with apparent global appeal and potential global use. I think it's an interesting discussion, but perhaps someone already has a simple answer.
