I have the opportunity to acquire a premium domain (single word, exactly what my business is) but it is a .IT (Italy) domain. I don't mind because the .IT can be used as the word 'It' in my branding. I understand that regional extensions will get lower results in global search indexing but I'm wondering if that impact is offset by the fact that this is a single word (that would often be the exact word in people's google search). For instance if I was in the gardening business I can acquire Garden.IT or I can have domain like EpicGardens.com. I prefer to brand the .IT domain but am I going to be punished in search indexing for having a regional domain extension? My business in not regional and I am hoping to get solid search results from people around the world. Does pluralization have a big impact on search results? Google Traffic Estimator suggests I will see almost equal gloabl searches for the singular and plural version of my domain. For example "Best Gardens" or "Best Garden" - will my search results for these inquiries be hurt if my domain is Garden.IT instead of a plural version (though the plural version would have to include another word)? It is not an option for me to get the plural version of my word (and it wouldn't work for my branding plans with the .IT extension). Thanks very much for the help. Sorry if either of these are newbie questions - I did a fair amount of searching of the forums before and could not find anything that addressed these specifically. Have a good one.
There is a school of thought that says if you start to build up anything apart from a .com, you're basically building their brand for them. Allegedly.
I agree with that school of thought but this is a premium single word domain. The .COM domain would be in the millions to acquire so if I build my business up enough that they try to piggyback then I have already succeeded. Also my marketing and branding plans use the .IT extension as a key part of the name (two words like Spank-It) so the .COM actually wouldn't be that obvious a competitor. More like: www.delicio.us I don't think they were too threatened by competition from delicio.com - but as they grew it made sense to acquire delicious.com as well (as I would do). Though when I acquire the dot-com it will include the IT (like spankit.com) as my branding and marketing will all include the IT. Hope this all makes sense. Thanks again for the help.