SHOULD I BUY A .CO DOMAIN NAME?
If your asking yourself that question, you might want to read this article first. Leave it to Go Daddy to make a strong marketing push during the Super Bowl in creating major buzz for .co domain names.
Owning premium domain names is like owning a piece of prime real estate. Let’s face it, before the internet bubble burst, there were people that made a lot of money squatting on domain names and selling them for thousands in some cases millions of dollars. This led to other extensions being created like .net, .us, .tv, .info, .biz, etc. So is the .co the next .com? Highly unlikely, I think domain name resellers are banking on the fact that it resembles .com so much, which makes sense (hence the current inflated price for a .co domain name extension).
However, the biggest problem is that .com is so dominant and will be very hard for people to adopt a new extension. Even if people remember your business name, chances are that they will automatically put a .com at the end of it when doing a search. This can potentially be hurtful to your business should your competitor own the .com extension.
But what about Overstock.com, I saw a new commercial of them advertising O.co, if big companies are doing why shouldn’t I? Unless you already own the .com of the new .co domain you are trying to buy, I wouldn’t buy one otherwise. Overstock.com is using O.co as a form of marketing research, to track their visitors. Just like I always advise companies to use a different phone number on their website to track leads. Lets face it, O.co is also pretty smart and easy to remember, just like those who registered cho.co or mexi.co. Ultimately when was the last time you saw .net, .biz, .us on the first page of a search engine like Google. Even when searching “Overstock” on Google O.co is nowhere to be found.
