How important is having a .Com?

I was wondering how much important is to have a .com site for your business or contents. What about other domains like .tk and .co.nr? I can save a lot of money with such domains for my future experimental web sites.

 

How often do you visit .tk or .co.nr sites? It's a waste of time and effort buying those.

 

Might screw up your "experiments" a bit.

 

We don't need to buy those, they are free.

 

Regardless, it's a waste.

 

Well domains are only like $8 to reg. It's not really that expensive. Besides a .com is more noticed.

Think about it. Isn't it more memorable if I told you "check out my site at mybusiness.com" rather than "check out my site at mybusiness.co.nr".

They'd probably reply "what the heck is co.nr". It just makes your business look more professional.

 

if you visitor are from SE, it doesn't quite matter..

however, if most traffic are from type in, you should get yourself a .com

 

Yeah maybe, just saw a member with a .tk domain in his signature and realized about these. I haven't seen such domains in search results either

For business sites a .com is necessary and i use those as well, but what about content sites which are not supposed to look so big or professional? Plus 8$ isn't a big amount but even that is not worth investing for ideas which have a very small chance of working.

 

They are usually filled with spam. Personally I'd think twice before linking to .tk domains.

 

Well unless you can form good words with it.

eg. del.icio.us

 

You might encounter some legal difficulties somewhere down the line with the .tk registrar. It's not really worth the small amount of money you'd save.

 

A .com domain is good for branding your business/image. It is unique in the sense that everyone uses the words ".com" and it is a household name.

I would personally always go for a .com name as oppossed to a .co.uk if you are living in the UK.

Unless its a charity of course a .com domain name carries prestige.

 

Having a .com is much easier to to optimize for traffic from all countries.

 

.net is not so bad if you can't get the dot com because someone is sitting on it in the parking station and you must have that domain. Saving money is not the objective unless you are dealing in peanuts or it's a personal site. Think ROI.

 

depends on your target audience. If you go for fi dutch people it's better to have a .nl which is the country tld and a .com is better if you go for US or global traffic. .co.nr I have never seen before

If you want to save money ... $5.99 for a .com domain at Godaddy.com at the moment till 12-31-2006

 

I'm quite ok with all posts above.
However, if your .co.nr is well done with good keywords and therefore high in search engine, it looks to me that it is ok.
If I'm searching for a specific product on Google and got my result with a .co.nr on top, I may click on it and find my stuff anyway.

 

For branding purposes, I would suggest going for the ".com" version (that is, of course, like an earlier posted mentioned, unless you come up with something catchy like del.icio.us).

Other extensions are also an option, but stay away from the free ones, as they are associated with spam and amateurism and will hurt the overall credibility of your website.

F1RM

 

i use a .info which hasn't seemed to hurt at all. I'd use a .com for my personal or professional site but my .info is all content. Its not that big but its slowly growing and SEs don't seem to notice a difference.

 

I think people seem to remember a .com better than anything else. But again, its the content that matter, a site ain't nothing without good content to keep people coming back!

 

Yes, ^^^^^, right! It is easier to remember a dotcom. Also need a name people will remember and come back too.