.Co Domains - Any thoughts?
-
Hi Guys
I'm not sure which section this one belongs in as I didn't see a section for domains/tlds.
I wanted an opinion on the future of .co domains. We own a gift company (www.xperiencedays.com), as well as a gift recommendation site (www.uniquegifts.net), and invested in a few gift occasion .co domains (www.birthdaygifts.co, christmasgifts.co etc). This was partly because they were cheap and easy to come by, but also with a hope that they soon gain some public recognition.
My question therefore is whether anyone within SEOMOZ has an opinion on whether .co will be widely accepted, whether they will (as google claims) be treated as a non-country specific url, and early success stories you know of, and finally whether the recent news from Overstock to rebrand as O.co (http://www.overstock.com/guides/faqs-about-o-co) is the kick start that .co need. I realize that is more than one question
-
This is the exact reason why I am hesitant to purchase and run with .CO domains. I would rather exercise all of my options to make a .com work rather than running with a .CO.
-
I, personally, am not a huge fan of .co domains from a branding perspective. I believe it easily confuses prospective clients with .com domains.
-
Just to add my four bob to this thread. We recently had the case of a client wanting to use the .co version of his business name as opposed to his .com.au. The .com belonging to a competitor. His re designed website was launched under the .co domain and the feedback from his clients and colleagues who he emailed using the .co email address was that the .co looked suspicious and spammy, as an email address firstly, and the web address was seen as something that did not resonate well with the local and international market.
I think the .co domain will take some time to be accepted for regional search engines such as Australia until the domain name becomes more readily accepted into mainstream website development and more commonplace.
-
And vice versa though? Could you end up with more traffic mistaking you for your larger competitor?
-
.co is the ccTLD for Colombia. It was packaged up by Godaddy as a TLD for 'Companies' 'Communities' 'Corporations' and other things that it doesn't represent. Buying a .co ccTLD and trying to rank in Google.com is like buying a .au ccTLD and trying to rank in .Google.com. If I had the choice between .info and .co I would go with .co for branding reasons and .info for SEO reasons. Why for SEO? Because I've seen and worked with companies that have acheived with .info but yet to do so with .co. Search "William Shakespeare" for example and look at the .info outranking the .edu's.
If I want to rank globally I'd have to pick gTLD over ccTLD but I definitely feel like I'm going against the grain here! Who's with me!?
-
I think that that is a great idea buying a .co where a competitor has the .com but i have also has to buy the .co for my company just so that no one else can do this to me. When these were first released it seem to tak an age for google to see them and rank them high but i think that now they have been around for a while google seems to be ranking them higher, although I am yet to see a .co overtake a .com in google's rankings which is annoying as they are quite expensive compared to .com or .co.uk etc but you just have to buy them so competitors cant use them againsed you.
My advice would be to buy it just encase becuase you would be very annoyed if a competitor bought it and overtook you in the rankings.
-
I agree with you on buing a .co when a competitor owns the .com.
But I think in time the .co will gain value as the public becomes less fixated with the .com's. But having a .com will always be preferred. Like having a 800 number vs a 888, 877, or 866 number. If I had to put them in order.
-
Just to add that I would personally be scared of having domainname.co if I know my competitor has domainname.com - too easy to spell it wrong and send free traffic the wrong way.
-
Casey gave a great answer, but just to add another point...
Even if they don't get public recognition in terms of appealing to customers and becoming mainstream, generic names like www.birthdaygifts.co have considerable value to domainers and affiliates, so they are definitely worth holding on to even if you don't develop them.
-
Hi,
I definitely believe Google that these won't be treated as country-specific domains, and if I were offered a keyword.co versus a keyword.info domain, I'd most certainly go with the .co. I think that it will resonate with people due to being similar to what they're used to seeing. This, of course, has nothing to do with a technical advantage: we'd like to believe that a TLD doesn't mean much from the perspective of a search engine, although you do see .com keyword-rich domains ranking better than other TLDs with the same keyword, in a lot of cases. Again, you don't want to confuse cause and effect: does the .com really help, or are .com domains usually owned by people who put up better websites? Hard to say.
When big companies use a TLD, that certainly lends some credit to it, and I think the domains you've bought are good. I don't think you've wasted your money, especially if they were quite cheap!
I wouldn't spend too much time or money buying every .co. domain under the sun, but I do think they're a better investment than many other TLDs. I don't have any stories of big successes yet, and I'd go as far as to say that the TLD is a bit too new to know what its fate will be. I do, however, doubt it will become as highly spammed and disregarded as the much-maligned .info and .biz.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Any recent updates from Google or community on sub domains vs sub directories?
Hi all, This has been a debate for years and I have noticed most of the SEOs suggest to go or switch to sub directories instead of sub domains. Still is this the same or any new updates from Google or SEO community? We have moved a sub domain to sub directory last year. The result was sub directory content started ranking good; but no change in website rankings. Because of moving sub domains to sub directories, will the linkjuice/PR of the website gets diluted as the number of pages increases which will takeaway soe authority? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Ranking impact: Traffic in website pages vs sub directory vs sub domain
Hi all, I need clarification on this. Not every time website main pages rank, some times even pages from sub directories or sub domains like blogs or guides; especially for branded keywords. I just wonder what happens when so much traffic is generating in sub directories and sub domains just because of limited landing pages in main website. Will this traffic be counted as traffic in main website as per Google? Traffic increase in main website really an ranking factor? Will the "brand + topic" related keywords' traffic is more for a website; will it ranking improves even for "topic keywords"? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Ranking drop after sub domain to sub directory migration. Usual?
Hi all, We had our help articles on sub-domain help.website.com. Then we moved it to sub directory website.com/help/. We expected ranking improvement of website.com as there is a wide saying of benefiting from sub domain to sub directory migration. We have noticed that ranking improvement of new sub directory pages (website.com/help/) but not for any main website pages (website.com). I presume that link juice from main website has benefited new sub directory pages but main website lost ranking due to the page rank dilution. Do you agree? Any ideas? Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | vtmoz0 -
Duplicate Domain Listings Gone?
I'm noticing in several of the SERPs I track this morning that the domains that formerly had multiple pages listed on pages 1-3 for the same keyword are now reduced to one listing per domain. I'm hoping that this is a permanent change and widespread as it is a significant boon to my campaigns, but I'm wondering if anyone else here has seen this in their SERPs or knows what I'm talking about...? EX of what I mean by "duplicate domain listings": (in case my wording is confusing here) Search term "Product Item" Pages ranking: domain-one.com/product-item.html domain-one.com/product-item-benefits.html etc...
Algorithm Updates | | jesse-landry1 -
Any SEO thoughts about Google's new Data Highlighter for products?
After searching around on the web for a while I couldn't find any case studies or interesting posting about Google's new feature to highlight structured data. In Google Webmaster Tools you can now tag your products to be displayed as structured data in Google's search results. Two questions that rose immediately: 1. What effect will Google's new Data Hightlighter for products have on your SEO? Can we expect better CTR's for productspage results in Google? Better conversion rates perhaps? Any case studies that show KPI improvements after using structured data for products? 2. I would love to see some examples in the search results to see what productpages would look like after Data Highlighting it. Your thoughts or input about this subject will be much appreciated.
Algorithm Updates | | SDIM0 -
What's better .NET or a hyphenated.COM domain
What's better .NET or a hyphenated .COM domain I know this is simple but in selecting a domain for my current project and I only have two options. firstname-lastname.COM or
Algorithm Updates | | RonSparks
firstnamelastname.NET I'm leaning to the .COM as after reading the how to choose a domain name post. http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-to-choose-the-right-domain-name Thanks1 -
Anyone hurt by the 11+ million co.cc domain dump by Google?
Referencing this article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/07/06/google_cans_11m_dot_co_dot_cc_sites/ Curious what the ramifications of this to SEO (improve rankings over spammy results, etc) and to hear thoughts on this.
Algorithm Updates | | EricPacifico0 -
How does an exact match domain.me rate for SEO
Anyone have any idea how an exactly matching keyword (using the "domain.me" register) will compare against an almost matching keyword in the Google .ie search engine. (assuming that on and off page SEO will be the same). eg, www.wigets.me against www.mywigets.ie Thanks
Algorithm Updates | | peterds2