Choosing the right domain when none available for a multilingual startup

I am running a startup idea by my own. I am doing all programming, design, promotion etc. not because I do not enjoy team work but because I haven't met the proper people.

My idea was based upon an internet directory website. I prefer not to mention the exact field of business but it seems similar to others like Restaurants for example. So let's say it's all about listing restaurant businesses on a nice smooth and fast website custom built.

Every user can create a user profile and every business owner can create a business owner profile. After that, he can register up to 2 own businesses.

What are my problems ?

First of all, the .com and .co.uk domains are owned and I cannot purchase them. If I had the ItalianRestaurants website, my preferred website would be "ItalianRestaurants.com".

I started the website locally in my country under it's subdomain like "ItalianRestaurants.it" when it was available. In a year, the website has become a little more popular and I want to move to other countries also. Domains like .de, .es etc. are available, but .co.uk and .com are not.

My workaround was to purchase ItalianRestaurants.eu and .us for europe and usa. I am wondering If it's a smart move because I believe it will gather hundreds of people and changing it afterwards would be a pain and a total loss of site's popularity.

My second question is: should I have several domains for each country, continent or one for all, which is now impossible because of acquired .com domain by someone else?

An idea you might want to consider is using subdomains. Like id.linkedin.com for Indonesian users. Linkedin may not have linkedin.co.id. This has some benefits:

1. Cheaper.
2. Easy to create. (You need to provide at least 2 documents for creating co.id TLD including passport for foreign users and SIUP for trade company.)
3. Easier to manage.

I think purchasing .us, .co.uk, .eu, etc. is a good investment. It prevents someone from benefiting from your brand. But it requires more effort and money, for just starting to make a step.

Have you thought of using a completely different name, some thing completely off the wall as yahoo and google did. I know it's good to have keywords in the name but if you can't then why not?

Assuming the product category is locally oriented (like restaurants or hotels or cable companies) vs. some type of global product (can't think of an example of one), then I would do country specific websites.

I believe that is what most directory type sites do. Presumably, they know what they are doing and have good reasons for this structure. Example: Yelp. Yelp.com for US. Yelp.ca for Canada. Yelp.fr for France, etc... TripAdvisor.com for US. TripAdvisor.ca for Canada. TripAdivsor.it for Italy, ...etc.

This sort of approach confirms to Google that site is meant for in-country audience. This will help with search engine rankings and probably also with users who may be skeptical that a site that seems to be from another country can have good local content. It is also helpful for language localization.

Until you have no brand to be proud of is worthless acquiring several domains for each country. I think in order to success to settle a good relation with your customers and your startup's name.

When you see a good reaction for your brand and your service you won't hesitate about buying those domains.