What's the Benefits Of A .INFO name...In YOUR opinion,Would you trust a .info domain/use one? Also,Do you think a .info name could be successful for a business if the .org,.net,.com name is already used or parked?
I am old school, so for me a website has to have .com, .org extensions. Every time I visit a website with .info or .net extensions I can't help but thinking why would anyone choose those extensions. The only exception would be if the name itself complements .info or .net. For instance: searchfor.info or thefishing.net then I can kind of see the reasoning behind those extensions.
The first domain I ever bought years ago was a .net (the .com was taken but unused). I was happy with the purchase. Fast forward 15 years and checked them out when I saw this thread. Now the .com is available for purchase and my old .net is an MFA page. I personally use a .fm domain, but because I'm more interested in radio broadcasting and fm fits in with that theme. Of course, I know this will confuse some people so I also registered mydomainfm.com, just because I know some number of people will type it that way. As for the OP, I do not see any particular value to a dot-info domain, any more than a dot-biz or other extension. I wouldn't mind using one as a secondary site that is intended to feed your main site in some way, but if you're talking about having .info as your main site, I would consider another name.
So far I've used, in addition to .com, .net and .ws. I'd be happy to use .org, but not so much .info. This is only because the quality of sites using .info (that I've seen) are usually of low quality. I have really weird biases...
I have underutilised .info domains but even when they were our primary sites they never caused a problem. I had an interesting lesson in how little people understand about using the web. It's ball season (balls are kind of like proms but without the drama) in NZ so I spent a day traipsing around shops as my teenaged daughter tried on dresses. At one we found a nice dress but they didn't have her size in the colour we wanted. The shop assistant took my daughter over to the computer and showed her all the different colours she could get and told us that it would take a week to get it in. She even wrote down the style for us on their business card. As I waited I could clearly see the website name and that the price was about half of what they were going to charge. If we hadn't eventually picked a different dress we could go home and bypass the store. I'd put money down that they'd done this a million times and never had a customer go direct because people don't know what a url is or where to find it. Therefore .com, .info, it really doesn't matter.
@LawAbidingCitizen If you have good information, and or providing a service that people are interested in I don't think it will make much difference. In saying that from my experience I always type in .com first as I'm used to it. Is there a possibility you could change your name a little to get the .com you are after? Regards Konrad
low cost domain to try out a new idea like SEO traffic for single page targetting or LP for PPC traffic.
The questions holds many if's and but's . The only time a decision to get a .info domain would be right is if you use it accordingly - for an informational website. Even then, if the samename.com is taken, most probably you will be losing traffic to it, as many users just assume that a site name is a .com one and they can land on your competitor page. Now, if the .com is available you are best getting it and using .info to park and open the same website. Many people get the same name with various extensions and redirect them to get the best of their traffic. Whatever you choose, keep in mind that the .info also has the bad reputation of having a large quantity of spammy sites and spammers using it because of the very cheap extension. So if you decide to go that route make sure to fill your website with great, unique and useful content for your users.
I might be alone in my opinion.... .info was dirt cheap for a long time, and as a result, I have seen an excessive amount of crappy, spammy, websites, all hogging the .info. I rank .info slightly higher then .tk I really wish they had some control over the .info, and forced it to be informational, or tutorial websites as opposed to anything and everything. That said.... I still have one .info domain in my portfolion, and that site is running quite nicely. As far as trust goes, the only domains that I put alot of trust in, are .com.au domains -> simply as its a legal requirement to have a legally registered company to even own one, any other TLD, you have to treat with suspicion, and do your homework before simply signing up / giving money to.
If the keyword makes sense for the extension I would use it, assuming the .com wasn't available. One of my most profitable sites was a .info this stuff you hear about .info sites being penalised is nonsense.
I hear a lot of people saying that hate .info and I'm in that boat too, although I wouldn't mistrust a site for having that extension, I just like .com or, as qwikad said, something that compliment like fishing.net, link.me, etc.
The .info extension can be good as a standalone information site not intended for selling physical products but provides links to other sites that do sell products. I would mostly use it for more in-depth explanations of products or services, or I'd use it for review sites and/or general instruction sites. It might serve some useful purpose in non-profits and in education, too. It also might work well for annoucement-style or some press release sites.