.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
-
Descriptive domain vs business name domain
I originally set up my domain as "overlandparkphotographer.com" and then have my "jpshots.com" pointing to it. What I recently discovered is that even though the pages of my I set Yost SEO Title to be "JPShots Senior Pictures | Wedding Photographer" When you search "overland park photographer" the snippet tile is just "overland park photographer" which sounds super sketchy. I don't know if this is something to do with yost, or if my sneaky Domain isn't worth much, and I should simply use my regular jpshots.com domain as the primary. I know it works like a charm with yahoo, but I'm not sure how much the domain name factors google these days.
Algorithm Updates | | JPRichardson0 -
Domain Extensions
I wanted to get everyone's thoughts on the new domain extensions that are now available. I'm considering buying a couple .lawyer and .attorney domains for clients. I noticed when I tried to buy these I was asked for verification if we're going to be offering legal services through the site. That led me to think that it may be possible in the future that with this verification, if it's required, that means that not just anybody can have these domain names. That leads me to think that it's possible that these domains may benefit from users searching for terms with "lawyer" or "attorney" in their search term. I haven't seen anything in terms of these domain extensions and SEO yet, but I'd like to know your thoughts as to how these will be treated in the future. I can imagine these will be more valuable than the old .net, .us, .info, etc., domains.
Algorithm Updates | | Millermore0 -
Domain Authority Just Wont Budge
I've put off asking this question for a long time because I know what the short answer is, but I've been working the SEO on http://www.photojennette.com for almost a year now pretty constantly and all of the measurements are positives except for authority. Traffic has more than doubled, links sending visits has doubled, external followed links is 500% up, keywords sending is way up, pages within the site have way more links and are more diverse in their own SEO, but no matter what I can't get PA and DA to budge. In fact at one point DA dropped a point or two. (although OSE and Moz Analytics shown that competitors lost a point or two at the same time so I didn't think much of it.) I feel like I had a good grasp on what helps DA but I'm starting to question that. Anyone have any ideas?
Algorithm Updates | | jonnyholt0 -
New .TLD domains - SEO Value?
Hi all, I see that a new wave of domains are to be released soon. We are not talking or 1 or 2 new extensions, but more like 700 new extensions on a TLD level. What's your views on their SEO value? thanks!
Algorithm Updates | | bjs20100 -
.org appearing in browser search when .com is the primary domain
In most browsers, our visitors search for our domain and when they start typing the URL the drop down auto choices list .org as the first choice for our website. We do own the .org but it points to the .com and the .com is our primary domain. Why does .org seem to dominate Google search in this case? And since we have the .org forwarded to the .com, do we need to be concerned?
Algorithm Updates | | jimmyzig0 -
Has anyone seen this before? One domain dominates the entire first page!
Do a google search for "sober college" and tell me you don't see the entire page filled with one domain. (except the last result)
Algorithm Updates | | EmarketedTeam0 -
Using the canonical tag across multiple domains...
Hi guys I am looking for some help in regards to using canonical tags in other domains that have similar content to our main site. Would this be the right way to go about it? For example www.main.com is the website i would like to achieve best ranking with, but i also have other websites, www.secondary.com and www.somethingelse.com which have similar content and all link back to www.main.com So in order to make sure the google bot knows these other pages are a reference to the main.com page can i put a canonical tag in secondary.com that goes like this: rel="canonical" href="www.main.com" /> and put that same tag in somethingelse.com Would i achieve a better ranking for doing so on main.com or am i on the wrong track and will doing so not change a thing? I hope I'm making sense 😉 Best regards, Manny
Algorithm Updates | | Manny20000 -
Non .Com or .Co Versus .ca or .fm sites - In terms of SEO value
We are launching a new site with a non traditional top level domain . We were looking at either .ca or .in as we are not able to get the traditional .com or .co or .net etc . I was wondering if this has any SEO effect ? Does Google/Bing treat this domain differently .Will it be penalized ? Note : My site is a US based site targeting US audience
Algorithm Updates | | Chaits0