Does domain TLD really matter anymore?

[Wing Commander]

I'm looking to register a new domain, but the .co.uk and .com are both taken.

I'm tempted by the .Ltd domain to be honest.

My question - does the TLD really matter these days? Most browsers you end up typing the business name in and letting Google do the search, rather than type out the domain.

Its not a highly competitive domain or industry, and it's a local service (domestic cleaning) so I'd imagine a search for the business name in the local area would positively bias my domain in the search results.

Thoughts?

[QuartzDad]

wingcommandercleani.ng

You're welcome :-)

[robbieduncan]

In short yes! If there were two choices between companies and one had the .com and the other had the .ltd I'd probably think the .com was the bigger, more well established company. To be honest I'd take .co.uk over .ltd

[sjg]

For a local service I'd be looking at businessname+town.co.uk (or servicename+town.co.uk) before .ltd and the like.

[robbieduncan]

QuartzDad said:

wingcommandercleani.ng

You're welcome :-)

I have a clever domain like this for home use (we live on XXX Oval so I own XXXov.al). To be honest it's a pain as most people we I talk to don't get the .al part as they only expect .com etc so I'd stay away from using them as a primary domain. Especially as in my case it makes it look like I'm in Albania (not a problem for personal use)

[QuartzDad]

robbieduncan said:

I have a clever domain like this for home use (we live on XXX Oval so I own XXXov.al). To be honest it's a pain as most people we I talk to don't get the .al part as they only expect .com etc so I'd stay away from using them as a primary domain. Especially as in my case it makes it look like I'm in Albania (not a problem for personal use)

My personal use domain is surname.sh, our surname has commerical usage so pretty much every other suffix was already registered when I set it up twenty years ago. Cost has crept up quite a bit in that time, now up to $90/year but obviously can't really change after this long.

[Beetnik]

I have a .ltd domain which I don't use any more (the .uk became available so I took it).

The problem I encountered was with Universal Acceptance so found that it was quite common for website owners not to have their websites UA ready. This means they don't accept your email address as they don't recognise the .ltd TLD so you're not able to, for instance, open an account using an email address ending in .ltd. So I was forever reporting them to ICANN but ICANN can only advise and not enforce. So you end up having to have an alternate .com/.co.uk address to overcome this issue.

I guess it's fairly common for any new TLDs.

Is the .uk available? If so I'd recommend you take that.

[bitchstewie]

It might be an age or geek thing but I struggle to think of a single legitimate .biz domain name.

So yes to some degree I think it matters.

[Simpo Two]

After reading this thread several times I conclude that 'tld' is not a typo for 'ltd' but an acronym meaning 'suffix'.

[bitchstewie]

Simpo Two said:

After reading this thread several times I conclude that 'tld' is not a typo for 'ltd' but an acronym meaning 'suffix'.

Top Level Domain yes.

[Simpo Two]

yay!

[Wing Commander]

Thank you to everyone that has replied. It's good to get insight from others.

I think I'll get a different domain then, that perhaps conveys a little more authority. The avaliable options for the actual domain "title" (for want of a better phrase) are:

<word>cleaning.uk
<word>-cleaning.co.uk (hyphen in the middle)
<word>cleaning.net
<word>cleaning.org
<word>clean.co.uk

Where <word> is just a a part of the name, that a consider to be fixed. Its not a location. We do currently only cover one area but I doubt like to artificially limit the business to one area.

Any thoughts on a particular domain? Perhaps the sensible thing is to buy several of them, point them so to one, and monitor performance of each

Thanks

[bitchstewie]

Wing Commander said:

Any thoughts on a particular domain? Perhaps the sensible thing is to buy several of them, point them so to one, and monitor performance of each

Thanks

It's easy to go over the top but generally buy "enough" to TLDs to sensible protect your brand without going over the top, then settle on the domain you actually want to use and promote and just make sure the other domains point to it if people go there.

I'll leave the marketers to tell you which TLD to use for marketing

[robbieduncan]

Hyphenated is OK. However if the non-hyphenated version is actively used by a company doing the same sort of thing I'd consider if that's a problem: will people go there instead of to you for example?

[Wing Commander]

robbieduncan said:

Hyphenated is OK. However if the non-hyphenated version is actively used by a company doing the same sort of thing I'd consider if that's a problem: will people go there instead of to you for example?

I'm leaning towards the hyphenated certain too. The non - hyphenated version is not currently being used ie the address goes back to a 123-reg landing page. Back in the summer, when I get first started looking, I *think* I remember the webpage being used as an online directory for cleaners, where people could just list their own details or their cleaning business, for a fee. So, not a direct competitor in any way, even if they did come back online with it

[robbieduncan]

Wing Commander said:

I'm leaning towards the hyphenated certain too. The non - hyphenated version is not currently being used ie the address goes back to a 123-reg landing page. Back in the summer, when I get first started looking, I *think* I remember the webpage being used as an online directory for cleaners, where people could just list their own details or their cleaning business, for a fee. So, not a direct competitor in any way, even if they did come back online with it

Go for hyphenated then. Keep an eye on the non-hyphenated version in case it becomes available

[Algarve]

QuartzDad said:

wingcommandercleani.ng

You're welcome :-)

This is horrid advice!

.ng is Nigeria, you'll struggle to rank a domain like this in Google. You can't region set a country like this to UK (or anywhere else) in Google search console so you'll end up totally screwed.

[DSLiverpool]

.co is gaining popularity in the UK
A hugely backed start up in nutrition has gone .co
But if you can make it work and your UK focussed try for the .co.uk