OK, so I'm way out over my skis talking about the business of domain names, but hopefully someone in here can point me in the right direction. I'm trying to locate research done on cultural preference for domain names. For instance: * Do users in Latin America prefer sites ending in .com or specific ccTLDs? (Replace Latin America with any other region/country name and the question is the same.) Does anyone know of studies conducted around this topic? I skimmed through Gartner but it's not their field, same with Forrester. Thanks in advance. KB
this is one hell of tough topic, but a no brainer. people don't see domains by there location and extension like .com, .net, .us., .ca. people always prefer authority, like .com domain is better than .net or .info.
I think its not really a matter of preference, more like what is your business target group. Country-specific domain extensions are growing in popularity but they are a great idea only if you have a more local approach, if you provide an online service or product aimed to be sold worldwide then its a no-brainer - .com is your choice. Still, you do not necessarily need to choose. Its a pretty common practice to register various extensions and link them alltogether to open your main website. This way you are maximizing your traffic collection, helping your SEO and avoid confusions when word-of-mouth is involved
I agree with the above post, and would add that it definitely depends what the website is going to be about. For example, for a website promoting a cultural or linguistic cause, in Spain they would use .es (Spain) or .cat (Catalonia) depending on the region. For something commercial, general, eCommerce etc., .com is not going to be poorly seen, of course. In Argentina (the only Latin American country I'm familiar with), it's free to register .com.ar domains as a citizen, so everyone that I know from Argentina tends to go with that unless they're targeting a different audience.
@Rado_ch makes good points. I'm in NZ and I know that if I'm looking for a local business that a .co.nz is the way to go. dot com is ok but I'll double check the contact details to make sure they are local. If I'm researching travel to a particular destination then I will expect the local domain extension - especially if I'm concerned about the info being out of date.
In US, almost all businesses use .COM - and it's very uncommon to actually find a business using a .US. But in other countries, Australia, NZ, UK, Germany, etc - more people are using the local country TLD.