Is .xyz is good alternative if .com is taken?

I needed a domain name for IT startup but .com is taken(as always). So is it .xyz good?
it's not an app development agency - rather more focus on design part alone.
.agency looks heavy as only two people are working and probably looking for freelance tasks.

 

The short answer is NO. If I absolutely had to have that name, I'd take .net or .org before I'd take .xyz.

 

.xyz is good one, not many people would take it as first alternative to .com, but it has gained momentum, it is one of the most popular new TLDs (only .top has more registrations than .xyz), and if you cannot get any sensible .com domain, you will not be wrong with .xyz.

Why didn't you make a poll, to see preferences?

As for qwikad advice, .net is also good contender; but .org is not good choice in my opinion, it implies non-profit organization. I think .xyz is also better choice than some popular ccTLD, such as .co and .io.

If you're willing to take these new TLDs, and you deal with design, then why don't you try .design? It's first year price is heaviliy discounted, you can get it for 5 $, and renewal comes at 35 $.

 

No just .com i feel very good

 

As someone who regularly buys domains, the tld .xyz just screams 'CHEAP' to me and I stay away from it except when I need a cheap domain for redirection purposes. It's just not a reputable enough extension for a primary domain. If a .com is not available, I'd just keep looking for another name that goes with my company or pick a more reputable sounding tld like .co or .net or .org

 

1 in favor of .xyz, 2 against.
1 in absolute favor of .com..
hmm... the issue is still unresolved. I guess, i should take a break for a few days, and decide on weekend about new name.

 

Many website owners are still unfamiliar with the . xyz domain name extension. Because of that, they don't yet trust it and ask if it's safe. They seem to be concerned that their site might be hacked more easily than if they use a .com extension.

 

@MitchDaGuy
.CO is a country specific TLD, its not a general TLD.
Unless you "want" google to think that yours is a Columbian company, don't go with .CO tld.
Same goes for any "2" character TLD, like .IO, or ".CA", or ".FM" etc etc.


@c4cyber
.XYZ is a general TLD, but I doubt this TLD will ever get any professional appeal, specially for a "company" website.
In regular English, "XYZ" is short for "some some something something", like "etc etc", isn't it?

"XYZ" person bought a car, "XYZ" company launched "XYZ" product...
How can that be something professional?

Second choice is to go with a profession specific TLD, like ".software", ".design", or ".host", etc etc.


For an IT company, you can also go with the 2 character country specific TLD of your country where you are actually operating.
Not any 2 character TLD, but the TLD assigned to your country.
This is the next best choice if .COM is gone, and yours is a service/country specific company.

 

@JEET Technically, yes, .co is a local tld for Columbia but basically Googles attitude towards .co is that enough people have started using is that they now treat it as a generic tld like .com, .net

Matt Cutts from Google talks about the .co tld specifically and how Google treats it:
https://www.go.co/about/seo/

 

@MitchDaGuy
I cannot seem to find any blog post on Matt Cutts blog where he says that google will treat .CO as a non-country specific tld, simply because many people registered .CO domains...
That statement is coming from this go.co person I think, not from matt cuts.
Matt cuts blog is saying to be careful when registering these "2" character tlds. They are not general tlds.
All these "youtuber SEOs" make up their own rules, 80% times myths...
Who is that go.co? Saw this website for the first time in about 20 years of being a webmaster. Never ever seen it in any search result either (about SEO or about domaining)...
I am very sure that google treats .CO domains as Columbian country specific domains.

That go.co person is saying that you can specify "another" country in your webmaster tools section, but who is to say that google will give it any serious consideration?
If webmaster tools decided who will rank where and "how", then every webmaster would have ranked on top!!!

 

there are many tld domains at the moment, try something else maybe domain.company or something like that depending on your goals.

 

There are actually a decent amount of noteworthy tech companies who use .xyz domains. Just a few I've seen:

• Engine.xyz - startup accelerator founded by MIT
• ABC.xyz - Google's parent company Alphabet
• Starship.xyz - delivery robot startup created by former Skype co-founders
• Milk.xyz - culture, fashion, and media collective

Personally I think it looks really cool and is more memorable than the ccTLDs. And way better than something like a .net or a .biz.

 

An interesting research that might help you decide:

http://www.circleid.com/posts/20200617-top-level-domain-bias-in-search-engine-indexing-and-rankings/

https://www.hartzer.com/blog/tld-bias-search-engine-indexing-rankings/

 

Depends on the use you'll have for the domain, if you go to Godaddy you might be able to buy the .com version from the buyer, specially if it will be used for branding your company.

If you are looking to use the domain name for your company and not worried about losing some traffic to the .com then then buy the xyz however remember that you may also lose email traffic to the @domain.com address.

 

Avoid .xyz like the plague.

Spam reduction services and search engine algorithms often downrate .xyz domain names as it has a higher ratio of spam services than other TLDs.

 

Find another name with the .com available. Anything else is just a waste of time!

 

Call me snooty but I only use .com domains for business. If I buy a .net it is to cover the same domain as my .com to protect my brand. I have used .org but only for associations or non-profits. In my experience, due to the prevalence of .com domains, there is a tendency to think EVERY domain is a .com. If your domain is wesellcars.xyz, occasionally people will only remember the "wesellcars" part and automatically type in .com. You end up sending traffic to another domain.

Just for grins, I did a search for "IT consulting services dallas texas", and out of the top 20 results 17 were .com, 2 were .co, and one .org. A significant number were over 15 characters long.

As a side note, I always recommend to my clients to buy the shortest, most easy to remember domain possible. Or something that is highly brandable. Also, try to avoid hyphens and numbers. People will remember simple phrases such as "bobsusedcars.com" but not "bobs-used-cars-1.com".