.CO Domain Extensions.
.CO domain extension on my mind. I wrote an article about a while back on my other blog about .co.domain names and what they mean for companies wishing to adopt the extension if their dot com is not available.
Here is the link to the article: https://ukdomainbrokers.ukwebsitedesigners.co.uk/?p=1217
Now more interestingly here is the definition of what a .co domain extension means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.co
.co is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) assigned to Colombia.
Now here me out not only do I build websites I also manage PPC advertising and if a client that came to me with a .co domain extension yet was based in the UK I would not advise him to do any PPC advertising for the domain. The reason why and I have dot com domain names aswell as .co.uk I am based in Cardiff UK and have found no matter how hard you try to set ones setting for GEO targeting with the dot com domain names I get a tonne of traffic from the USA. But imagine if I was the client and wanted only traffic from the UK but got traffic from the USA or Colombia as in the .co domain extension before you know it all my budget would be eaten up and I would not be happy with the web designer steering me in the wrong direction.
People are like sheep, a person who has no knowledge of SEO tells a couple of people on the internet that a dot co domain name extension is an accronym of dot com or the word ‘company’ and before long the misinformed information has spread like wild fire with people buying .co domain names without realising the repercussions this would have on their traffic or once they consider pay per click advertising what that would mean to their advertising budgets if they were targeting traffic for their own location.
With that said I do not believe owning a dot co domain name would be beneficial to any company other than businesses in Colombia and it would damage my reputation trying to market this domain extension to anyone other than to the country it is assigned to. Don’t get me wrong I fell into the trap and soon wised up.
Further reading the entity of the following website seems not to have any knowledge of SEO because if he/she had they would be ranking on the first page of Google for the following search terms: Domain Management, Domain Registrars, Registrars, whois, which says they are biased, as they could be the owners of the domain extension: https://www.go.co/about/faq/ Its a bit of a conincidence that there are no names mentioned for me personally to ask them to prove where the traffic was coming from. I would want hard evidence and may just register a domain name and and add analytics just to prove a point.
Here is an example of a UK based website with a dot com domain name setting their GEO targeting for UK only and you can see by the chart that there are other countries, with USA being no 2 on the leaderboard, which if this company was paying for PPC their budgets would be swollen up by other countries visitors.
It is my job to guide companies in the right direction and reading on the internet mileading information and steering companies in the wrong direction is downright shameful.
Overstock.com bought overstock.co this could have been to stop cyber squatters cloning their site and not to help them with their SEO. The same with hyphen domain many companies may buy up hyphen domains to stop cyber criminals.
The following links are another reason why not to use a .co domain extension unless you are from Colombia:
https://community.ceramicartsdaily.org/topic/20562-the-perils-of-using-a-co-domain-name/
If you have any questions just comment below.
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