Is it time to move away from .com

[eaton2003]

With all the recent going on's in the indictments of Poker Stars, AP etc... is it about time that offshore gaming companies and affiliates who cater to the US move away from the .com extension. Although .com itself is universally recognised as the main top level domain name everyone should use and the one with value. It is also worth noting that this actual domain name is aimed at US Commercial business. As a result any misuse of the domain is easier for the US to shut down than a .eu or .co.uk one.

Wiki entry on .com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.com

Should large gaming companies go after small nation domain names where their income helps assist the nations out? For example should Costa Rican sportsbooks use .cr etc, and should affiliates consider using different extensions?

[Louis - Income Access]

Doesn't google still give more weight to a .com domain than to other domain extensions, at least with respect to keywords within the domain?

Also, would affiliates feel comfortable promoting a non .com brand? I think psychologically, users still have more confidence in a .com site than other extensions.

Agree completely from a decentralizing perspective but I think the market has a long way to come, it will take some major players to forge a path on this before it becomes a safe move for any mid-tier brand.

[mojo]

Interesting topic. Reading wiki, after adding .biz to replace .com as a commerical extention, it had no effect on the popularity of .com. Seems to be most trusted.

[Gabriel_LCP]

Well it sort of makes sense, but Louis does have a strong point. I feel the first choice for everybody would be a .com even though it might bring problems in the future. But if there is no other choice then they will have to start to change eventually.

[Simmo!]

Interesting topic and worthy of thought. I find .net seems to get near-equal treatment to .com but while that removes the commercial concern, it still falls under ICANN who appear to be government controlled. I wouldn't use .us, .biz, .info unless desperate myself.

[WinYourWayKyle]

I got an email from ftp when the DOJ has seized there domain pointing people to fulltiltpoker.co.uk so people could again access the website.
I agree that .com's and .net's are good domains as well.
I use .ca for my website since it is focused to the Canadian marketplace.

[michael1981]

Dot com used to be the best extension, but as far as gambling goes, I wouldn't use a dot com site. America probably won't target affiliates, but i've always done well using .org, .net, and other extensions.

[ocreditor]

I agree with Louis - .com inspires confidence in potential users. I'm not saying, obviously, that .com is the only one they can be persuaded to trust; there's plenty of people here who can prove that theory wrong, just that it's perceived as the most "trustworthy" right off the bat.

[graham]

It is definitely something that should be considered in light of the recent actions by the US government. What a better alternative would be, I am not really sure.

[davemerry]

This is an extremely interesting discussion, something which although is worth pondering I don't think will really affect ours or any other operators decisions when it comes to domain choice in the near future.

Switching down to ccTLD's will cause operators to miss out on the all important international markets. You could switch to a less popular TLD although a huge element of online gambling is trust based - would even you as a web-savvy individual think twice about putting £100 into a site which resolves on castlecasino.org? I would and this tells me that an un-savvy person would just move on to the next .com site.

For affiliates I think ccTLD's and non .com TLD's are fine, most of my affiliate sites us these as well - and they earn perfectly fine! But remember operators have to build a trusted brand - something I doubt would work with something lesser known extension.

When everything starts to fall everyone will run, although no one is going to be cautious and slowly back away IMO.

[universal4]

I personally do not think that Trust and .com are not interchangeable.

I personally think there are so many factors involved in branding that it is shortsighted to think that .com has as much to do with it as many of the other factors.

.coms WILL get more type-in traffic but that does not always translate into more trust or better branding.

Rick
Universal4

[nsawins]

It is interesting to see big brands like Overstock and Twitter, for example, starting to use the new .co extension. Overstock is rebranding itself O.co and I think it's only a matter of time before many big time brands start using extensions other than .com in the future as their main website. I don't think we're there yet but it will happen. However, for now, I still think .com is the way to go.

[mojo]

It is interesting to see big brands like Overstock and Twitter, for example, starting to use the new .co extension. Overstock is rebranding itself O.co and I think it's only a matter of time before many big time brands start using extensions other than .com in the future as their main website. I don't think we're there yet but it will happen. However, for now, I still think .com is the way to go.

Not to get to far off track but I was just reading about this. Overstock went to O.co and with all of the branding costs, and google fiasco, they ended up losing money. Google punished them for offering college students with .edu pages a discount on purchases in exchange for putting their link up. Google values .edu more and punished them. O.co dropped dramatically in the searches causing a loss to revenue.

Just a 'what not to do'.

[eaton2003]

Google does give preference to .com, but I feel the preference given is much less than before. For example I have two domains and one is a .biz and one is a .com nearly of the same word. The .biz receives over 5,000 hits a day and the .com gets less than 200 hits a day. They both had valuable time placed into them but the .biz was seen as more important because my main articles were placed here.

Does .com/.biz matter in SEO when it comes to building quality sites? Should gaming companies and even affiliates catering for the US run the risk of loosing their domains?

[mojo]

It is my opinion that if the Feds don't like your site, they cannot just take it. Whether it's a .com or .biz or anything. There is an interesting article about ICANN and the fight to keep the government from getting too much control and international implications. Source.

However, if you are doing something illegal, it doesn't matter the extention. If they want to seize your domain, they will seize your domain. The extention is just a minor detail. If you are doing something wrong, you can expect that. I don't feel affiliates are doing anything illegal that I can see. If I thought so, I wouldn't be doing this. But what do I know. They can, and do, surprise us.

Not sure on the SEO end.

Very good questions and thought provoking. What domain extentions should we be considering?

[TheGooner]

Unless you've already got a leading brand - or do something nifty like that O.co which rolls off the tongue nicely ... and was a good idea even if badly implemented ...

You should only consider using .com ... or .com ... or .com

Anything else simply makes it too hard for your potential customers to find - it makes your website too much of a soundbite - as you have to spend time explaining or stating that it is not a .com.

UPDATE : (more thinking)
I guess another exception would be if you really are targeting a single country - then country extensions .co.uk, .com.au, co.za, or .ca all work well to signal local identity. But it is limiting the appeal outside that area.

[sherone]

I Would go with .com as my number 1 choice. I don't think I would go with .net if .com wasn't available.. I would just have to think of something better..com is the most common and popular choice. I mean just watch tv or listen to the radio you will here example.COM before any other extention. but on tv you might here .org more often but net might be the best choice.