Domain Name Endings

[merseyboy]

Hello,

i am starting a new business venture. I have the European rights to sell a unique product which i think will do very well. The company who makes the products are based in Taipei and gave the rights to the US to a company about 12 months ago who are having staggering success within a small time frame.

My question is, do i need to just buy the .com and run sites from there in the different languages or would i need to buy the endings for each specific country we sell in?

Thank you

[ginettag27]

The choice is yours, you don't *need* to buy any of them... It depends slightly if you want to be perceived as a worldwide "company" or uk or eu or or or...

If you're based in the uk, then I'd usually recommend getting the .co.uk and .com if available. You can then point the .co.uk to the .com.

If you really want more, then look into that, I think that all the european ones are registerable from the UK, but check JamieBeeston's profile for more info!

There are .eu ones around, but these seem to be not used that much...

HTH

[jamesuk28]

As you mentioned .com is the most valuable and will usually suffice. However it may be prudent to acquire the country variants just to cover yourself. The .eu extension was supposed to do away with the need for seperate country extensions within the EU, ie .it for Italy / .fr for France, but was a spectacular flop as most countries opted to keep using country specific extensions.

[LivinLaVidaLotus]

Not only that, if you wanted to create sites for specific countries then you'd be advised to use their ccTLD (extension) as Google will then rank the sites in the local versions - wheras a general .com would not (unless it were hosted in that specific country).

[M400 NBL]

For the cost of registration it is worth getting the extension of your potential customers, plus .com and .co.uk- most businesses pay for .net and .org to minimise confusion and the possibility of paying up to avoid disputes. Search for domain drs.As already mentioned, you can direct traffic so you only need one website .

[jamesuk28]

Forwarding traffic is a very lazy and ineffectial way of doing things. Better to build a website for each extension and optomise it accordingly, Google is not stupid after all.

[skwdenyer]

jamesuk28 said:

As you mentioned .com is the most valuable and will usually suffice. However it may be prudent to acquire the country variants just to cover yourself. The .eu extension was supposed to do away with the need for seperate country extensions within the EU, ie .it for Italy / .fr for France, but was a spectacular flop as most countries opted to keep using country specific extensions.

But do make sure you don't fall foul of rules about place of incorporation. You may find you need to have an actual incorporated entity in some countries to be allowed to use the domain extension of the country.

For instance, if you want a .fr domain, you must have an official address in France (or pay to use somebody else's) - you cannot register a .fr domain with a UK address.

[merseyboy]

Hey Guys,

thank you all for comments. I can see i should find a domain name and buy all the extensions. Google will be a very important factor in driving customers to the site, so some thought needs to be put into this.

Again, thanks for the comments

Josh

[merseyboy]

any good online tools available to help you come up with a good domain name ?

[M400 NBL]

www.who.is will give suggestions when you use keywords to check availability of a domain.

Basically it will give alternatives domains if the one you want is alreday registered.

Usually a hyphenated domain is not as good as a non-hyphenated domain, and the shorter the better...which is why youtube is better that video-upload.com. It is worth considering NOT using a generic domain name for this reason. If you use Google properly, your customers will find your website by the keywords you use.