.com vs .us, which is best?

[Seller]

I was thinking about setting up a dedicated ecommerce website and have been looking at domain names. Since my target buyer will be in the United States which domain extension will be best for SEO, a .com or .us?

I read that country domains get better results in local searches so I thought about a .us.

.com vs .us, which is best? Any thoughts on this?

 

[Rob Whisonant]

Always go with the .com, don't even bother with country specific domains. Not worth it.

 

[Ciarda]

Always go with the .com, don't even bother with country specific domains. Not worth it.

Agree with it, specialy if you start ecommerce maybe you are shipping worldwide but the domain are .us and people from italy are thinking they cant ship to us because we dont live in usa (example).

 

[Seller]

Seller

What if I am just going to be selling in the US?

 

[Ciarda]

Ciarda

That's going to be fine in my opinion, but if someone dont remember your website domain for first he try with .com and not .us

 

[Rob Whisonant]

Rob Whisonant

Think about it. When you are trying to remember a website address about blue widgets you visited before.... Do you type in bluewidgets.com or bluewidgets.us? Everyone types in .com.... Nobody types in .us....

.us makes zero sense for a ecommerce site.

 

[Seller]

That's going to be fine in my opinion, but if someone dont remember your website domain for first he try with .com and not .us

So then i would be losing a lot of traffic to the .com domai if their is one?

Think about it. When you are trying to remember a website address about blue widgets you visited before.... Do you type in bluewidgets.com or bluewidgets.us? Everyone types in .com.... Nobody types in .us..

You have a good point there. I was just curious as to if the local search ranking improvements by using a country domain would be worth it.

 

[Ciarda]

Ciarda

I was just trying to say what Rob Whisonat explain correcly and better :|
You dont lose traffic when you use .com.

 

[Rob Whisonant]

Rob Whisonant

Not sure where you are hearing this but when ever I go do a search at a search engine, 99% of the time all I see is .com extensions in the result. Maybe a .net here and there.

Be very careful who you listen to. The majority of information on the net is written by people that have never successfully used the information they are spewing. Also a ton of the information is spun, fake or just false.

Listen and learn from people that have ACTUALLY been a success from exactly what they are teaching you.

Don't get paralysis by analysis. Just do it. Get that site up and learn as you go. You will learn a lot more by actually taking action and quit trying to over analyse things.

 

[Seller]

Be very careful who you listen to. The majority of information on the net is written by people that have never successfully used the information they are spewing. Also a ton of the information is spun, fake or just false.

I agree but it's hard to know who is credible and who is not.

Don't get paralysis by analysis. Just do it. Get that site up and learn as you go. You will learn a lot more by actually taking action and quit trying to over analyse things.

I tend to overthink things a lot of times. As far as with websites, some of the things I see around in reading has got me afraid to mess up my site and get some kind of permanent damage to it from doing something wrong.

 

[lithin]

If the .com is available to register or purchase from someone else, you should go with it.
E commerce sites are best with .com, whatever be the country.

 

[Seller]

Seller

Why are ecommerce bites best with a .com? Does that help their rankings perhaps?

 

[hynds]

hynds

.COM is always a best choice in almost cases, and YES it will help you rank better than .US. For ecommerce, .COM will be easy to remember by customers than other extensions. it's a user behavior.

 

[lithin]

lithin

It is just the trend/experience. People are most familiar with .com and commerce. Also Google loves .com domains. Having the .com will definitely increase your SEO.

 

[smsmbooster]

You can by multiple domains point to the same place. Only SEO for the main domain.

 

[Sam]

I will always use dot com if possible, and never consider dot other extensions. Dot com is more general and user-friendly. If in case you would like to seduce search engines with a more targetted keywords that are included in the domain, then extensions other than dot com are best.

 

[Seller]

You can by multiple domains point to the same place. Only SEO for the main domain.

Why buy multiple domains if there is not SEO done for all of them?

I will alway use dot com if possible, and never consider dot other extensions. Dot com is more general and user-friendly. If in case you would like to seduce search engines with a more targetted keywords that are included in the domain, then extensions other than dot com are best.

What about using an extension like .hosting if I was to have a web hosting blog? Would a .com still be better in this case?

 

[Sam]

Sam

The most familiar and common extension is dot com. It was the first domain extension, and it also easier to sell in case you would like to sell your domain. Other extensions are just the alternative to a domain in case you want a short with a common word in the domain. For example, if your company name is MYBUSINESS, of course the first option you'd like to buy is a MYBUSINESS dot com. If it's not available to be bought, then you can opt other extensions if you insist the domain name must be MYBUSINESS.

 

[Seller]

Seller

If I wasn't looking to sell the domain ever and just wanted to use it myself then would one of those other word domain extensions work if the .com wasn't available for something that I really wanted?

 

[Rob Whisonant]

Rob Whisonant

Why have you not purchased a domain yet? You are procrastinating and over analyzing it. You should have had a basic site up by now. Get busy.

 

[Seller]

Seller

I already have one that isn't an ecommerce only site. I have been trying to figure out things for getting one setup that is just for ecommerce use only.

I just don't know much about ecommerce sites so that's one reason why I have been going slower. If it was a regular blog site or something I would have had something setup by now.

I tend to overthink and overanalyze things as you can tell. LOL

 

[Riviera]

.Com is much more popular and like a "common-international" domain extension. Just go with .com.
If we were your guest/client, we would prefer the .com website to the .us.
The .com is not like a local site, but the .us is.
It's like a face of your business.

 

[Mike001]

Seller,

You really are over analyzing this as Rob pointed out many posts ago.

If you look at Google's own stats, 58% of all web addresses are using the .com extension.

Unless you are a government agency or a nonprofit website the first extension that comes to mind from 96% of web users is the .com extension. Those are the exact stats I put out to my students in there class on Introduction to Domain Names and Extensions for a successful website. I gathered these stats at the close of 2016, from Google themselves to update my course material.

Think about it, briefly, with all the available extensions that are currently being sold, 58% of developers still prefer to use the .com extension. I have had many customers find all kinds of creative ways to spell their domain name in order to be certain they had a .com extension, even though their preferred name was available in multiple other extensions.

There is a reason it is the most popular, it is the original address scheme for the web, it has been around since the beginning. In 1984 when the web was first being implemented all web addresses were developed around a number scheme. A real pain in the ass to remember, but it worked. In 1985 domain names began to emerge, and the extensions, .com, .net and .org were introduced.

At that time there were restriction on who could apply for a .net and .org extension. So the .com extension took off as the common extension of the web.

Today there are over 300 extensions for the web. Some are still restricted as to who apply for them, some are reserved for certain audiences, to help better filter the web content, and others are open for domain name inclusion.

If you can find a way to make your name on a .com extension, do it!!!! Case closed, that is the best extension currently. If you have to chose another extension because there is no way to get your name in a .com format, choose a .net, that is the second most popular. Between the 2 extensions they have 89% of the internet. Over 298 extensions, share what is left.

I hope this helps answer your question.,

 

[Seller]

You really are over analyzing this as Rob pointed out many posts ago.

I tend to do that often, especially when it's something that I really don't know as much about as I would like.

If you can find a way to make your name on a .com extension, do it!!!! Case closed, that is the best extension currently.

Here's a question for you on that exact matter. What are your feelings on made up names?

When something isn't available in a traditional domain name I have seen a lot of people and companies create a name that had no meaning till they came up with it. Is doing something like that a good idea or is that a last desperate measure to take?

 

[jyy]

When you do marketing you'd have to emphasize the .us part. For instance, if you had a site called TheFunCarWash.us, then you'd have to advertise it as "TheFunCarWash.us" not "The Fun Car Wash". However, there could be some disagreement whether this extra step will help with a customer's memory. Is there anyone who thinks this particular advertising method won't work? For instance, what if they think the "us" part is part of the domain name and not the extension?

 

[harrygreen90]

harrygreen90

This is not possible and we will discuss it when that can happen with domain names. for your example, in all cases, everyone will always remember that domain name should go with .com when they might forget its domain extension.

 

[Unknown]

I have to agree with everybody that suggested you the .com domain over the .us

Regardless if your target market is mainly the people from the United States. You have to know that .com is the most popular domain extension and it won't change anytime soon. If somebody forgets the website's URL, they will always use the most common ones and therefore .com will come in much faster than .us

I personally don't even know of any ''big'' or ''successful'' website that would only be using .us domain extension.

But, if you have the resources available to you, and you can't decide then why not buy both? Get the .com and .us and redirect the .us traffic to the .com one. It's easy and it could be good

 

[naitan]

It's different. It depends on the purpose and the type of website.

 

[TGiF]

Any domain names, if you plan to register, always go for .com as its a more universal and widely use worldwide.

Even if you plan to do business in US only, a .com will always have more appealing factor and later on when you plan to resell, the .com domain name will fetch a better price compare to other extension.

Another possible domain extension you can consider is .co ( not too bad but afraid people may accidentally keyed in .com instead of .co


Bear in mind, the .com domain names are very saturated unless you come across a very unique name so that you can still get it.


All the best, mate.

 

[MyLead]

.com is the most common domain in the world. So it is better to go for .com, although most .com domains are already occupied so you might as well go for the .us domain.

 

[nacyreyes]

No doubts .com is the best for your SEO services. Thanks