how important is the .com TLD?
Possible Duplicate: what's more important - .com or name?
I am in the very early stages of what I hope to be a very profitable company. It is solely an online presence (think Digg, twitter, etc...), and there will be no brick and mortor store. I am also not taking any outside investing, and plan on funding it myself.
After much deliberation, I have settled on what I would like to call my company. The only problem is the .com has been taken. As far as I can tell, it isn't being used, someone has just been squatting on the domain for 6 years.
I could contact him and offer to buy it out, but I am hesitant to spend money if I don't have to.
How important is the .com domain these days? I have considered .co, but am a little hesitant to go that route. From what I have read and observed, most people google the site before they try the address bar, but I don't know hoe reliable the data is.
If you were creating the next (Pinterest, lets say) is a .com essential, or will another TLD work?
Getting Started Strategy Website
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There are plenty of such questions here, e.g. [what's more important - .com or name?](http://www.brightjourney.com/q/important-com-name). – Dnbrv 12 years ago
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Hi Joe, welcome to the site! As @dnbrv mentioned, this topic has been discussed to death on this site. To get you started, take a look at the linked question, as well as http://www.brightjourney.com/q/global-commercial-website-domain-com-ever-succeed http://www.brightjourney.com/q/non-com-domains-really-affect-branding http://www.brightjourney.com/q/co-domain-names and lastly take a look at the [domain tag](http://answers.onstartups.com/questions/tagged/domain) – Zuly Gonzalez 12 years ago
1 Answer
Frankly, the domain name doesn't matter that much. Yes, all things being equal, a dot-com is better. You'll lose some traffic when you use something else. But since all good names are taken, you'll be force to use a less memorable name, so either way you lose.
Truth be told, having a great product is way more important. Spend an hour looking for a domain name you are happy with (if need be, go on sedo.com and see if you like anything, although I hate encouraging domain squatters). Then move on and focus back on building a great product.
