.com v’s .co.uk – One specific situation. From reading the posts on this forum and general research I can see the general consensus is that .com is best when a website functions to serve a global audience. E.g. Software company Whilst .co.uk or say .de .fr or .us is best when a site is aiming to serve a particular geographic region. E.g. Hairdressers or pizza parlour. But what about when your website is a bit in between, so to speak? I currently have two new essay sharing websites: 1. Uses a .com TLD. This site provides law essays. 2. Uses a .co.uk TLD. This site provides essays in all subjects. Whilst both sites have mostly UK focused content, (which I want to maintain) I’m concerned that my biggest site (the .co.uk one) is going to miss out on a lot of international trade in the future. Whilst the (.co.uk site) has almost 3 times more content than the .com site its current unique visitor statistics for April (after 3 months online) are. 162 visitors compared with 123 visitors for the .com site The .com law site has 33% of its visitors from the US whilst the .co.uk all subjects site has around 5%. Should I change the .co.uk site to a .com domain? Would doing so greatly increase visitor numbers (search engine ranking for international or google.com searches) and profitability? I don’t own the .com domain for the sites name so I would have to research a totally different name. Also my skills are still in the novice/intermediate stage so I realise that changing will not be easy. Any advice or comments would be greatly appreciated and of course responded to. Thank you in advance. Karl.
.com is always best, especially for branding reasons. Of course, .co.uk is also a great extension, but most regular internet users are not going to remember it. For what it's worth, .com's are more commonly seen than .co.uk, which is why I'd stick with that.
I agree. That the visitors are mainly UK, doesn't mean the site should be UK-oriented. Use .com if the content is for a global audience.
If you targeted visitor is from UK then .co.uk is the best choice. While if you plan to target international traffic, .com is preferable.
Thanks again, everyone for the advice. It seems pretty unanimous. The problem domain is: essayzone [dot] co [dot] uk I've just purchased: bankofessays [dot] com I'm still not sure whether I'll change yet, as I do like essayzone, I think I'll do a day or two more research before making a final decision. If any one has an opinion on whether keeping the domain as it is, might be workable/profitable or bankofessays is really the only sensible choice I'd again be very appreciative. Thank you again. Karl.