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New Domain Extensions

Dave Richardson

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My Question: We have been receiving numerous e-mails recommending that we register our domain names with both .biz and .info extensions. I'd appreciate your thoughts on doing (or not doing) this.

John Kinde

In my opinion, if you own the .com domain name, registering under anything else is unnecessary. It's unlikely that your customers will accidentally go to .org looking for you. But someone else who registers your "name" under .org or .net will be unwittingly sending their customers to you. People almost automatically add a .com when searching for a domain name they're not quite sure of.

Linda Brakeall

I may be missing the boat here, but I suspect that .com will still be the brand name and all the rest will be generic. People will try .com first, and then MAYBE explore other options.

Gary Conner

I personally don't believe that the new domain will be of much value!

People almost always think ".com" no matter what you say. I own & manage over 70 domains and some of them are ".org", but we own the ".com" on all but one of them that we are using.

No matter how cute the ".biz", ".info", ".pro"s, etc. are, they will be much less valuable that even the ".net" & ".org"s. Remember, if you advertise your non-".com" you are probably just advertising for your competitors!

Ben Levitan

.com is the most recognized domain in the world. Most people will mistype if you give them a .net or .tv, etc. In fact most international companies (I mean companies in England and other countries) get .com's instead of .uk, etc. because it's so recognized. Also, if you are an .edu you should ALWAYS get the .com to prevent problems. For example, girlscouts.org is the Girl Scouts Web site. Who owns girlscouts.com?

Grant Holmes

This is a "fear factor" ploy to get you to spend money. Decide how badly you really want to cover every possible iteration of your Web name. The "What if?" game is ridiculous. You will basically waste a lot of money and time. Even a service like http://www.godaddy.com that offers site name for as little as $10/yr for a name and forwarding can add up to real money if you choose every name you can think of.

Example: they're probably marketing the ". NET, .BIZ, etc." names that are now available. I toss more on this fire. Are you going to get ".TV," .DK" and other COUNTRY extensions? Get a couple you think people will recognize and forget the rest.

Ken Braly

If you have the domain name you want (like "richspeaking.com"), then it is not worth getting the .biz and .info extensions, just as it is not worth getting the .org and .net extensions.

You already own the high ground with .com -- when people think of a business on the Web, they automatically think of .com. To get them to think of .net or .biz is unnatural, and probably always will be because .com was the first for businesses. If somebody else grabs "richspeaking.biz", for example, he is going to be at a disadvantage.

The only reason I can think of for getting a .biz extension is if the .com version is already taken, you really want it, and it is not a trademarked term. So if somebody had "booksandtapes.com" and you really wanted it, you could grab "booksandtapes.biz" to give you something akin to what you really wanted. But my advice would be to pick a different .com name that was still available, like "greatbooksandtapes.com".

SpeakerNet News is produced by Rebecca Morgan and Ken Braly. It is not affiliated with the National Speakers Association. Send comments or suggestions